"Joseph likes to see me dress a little for the evenings," she said, with quite a flush in her cheek.
And the young lady noticed that Starke smiled tenderly as his wife passed him. It was so weak! in ugly, large-boned people, too.
"It does one good to go there," said the Doctor, drawing a long breath as they drove off in the cool evening, the shadowed red of the sun lighting up the little porch where the machinist stood with his wife and child. "The unity among them is so healthy and beautiful."
"I did not feel it as you do," said Miss Defourchet, drawing her shawl closer, and shivering.
Starke came down on the grass to play with the boy, throwing him down on the heaps of hay there to see him jump and rush back undaunted. Yet in all his rude romps the solemn quiet of the hour was creeping over him. He sat down by Jane on the wooden steps at last, while, the boy, after an impetuous kiss or two, curled up at their feet and went to sleep The question about the model had stirred an old doubt in Jane's heart. She watched her husband keenly. Was he thinking of that old dream? Would he go back to it? the long dull pain of those dead years creeping through her brain. He looked up from the boy, stroking his gray beard,—his eyes, she saw, full of tears.
"I was thinking, Jane, how much of our lives was lost before we found our true work."
"Yes, Joseph."
He gathered up the boy, holding him close to his bony chest.
"I'd like to think," he said. "I could atone for that waste, Jane. It was my fault. I'd like to think I'd earn up yonder that cross of the Legion of Honor—through him."
"God knows," she said.