Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/340

 His father again was permitting the use of his money for household expenditures for, as Fidelia had prophesied, her desertion of David satisfied his father.

In Ephraim Herrick's view, God had acted; and Ephraim could believe, consistently, that it might very well be that God had hastened his actions a little so that he might at the same time redeem David and lighten the burden which was weighing so heavily upon His faithful servant, Sarah. Ephraim did not yet have definite knowledge of the certainty of his wife's doom; for David alone shared that secret with his mother. Before others of the family he played a cheerful confidence that she would soon improve and when he was alone with her he spent quiet hours discussing and contemplating the future life toward which, each week, she was more visibly traveling.

When he returned to the city, he longed for companionship as he never had before and he could take less and less satisfaction in the diversions offered by Snelgrove and his other friends. He wanted to have with him some one who knew and felt what he was feeling; and Snelgrove and the Vredicks and the rest did not even know about his mother; he could not tell any of them. What he wanted was to go to Alice; but how could he seek her now?

On her part, she was waiting for him. She had gained, from her meeting with him, also a freedom from her restraint. Upon the next morning, at breakfast with her father and mother, she had mentioned David boldly and added that she had seen him last