John Vincent loved his wife with the tenderness of an innocent man,
but all his tenderness could not avail to lift the weight of
settled melancholy which had gathered upon her. Disappointment,
waiting, yearning, indulgence in long lament and self-pity, the
morbid cultivation of unhappy fancies--all this had wrought its
work upon her, and it was too late to effect a cure. In the night
she awoke to weep at his side, because of the years when she had
awakened to weep alone; by day she kept up her old habit of
foreboding, although the evening steadily refuted the morning; and
there were times when, without any apparent cause, she would fall
into a dark, despairing mood which her husband's greatest care and
cunning could only slowly dispel.
Two or three years passed, and new life came to the Vincent farm.
One day, between midnight and dawn, the family pair was doubled;
the cry of twin sons was heard in the hushed house. The father
restrained his happy wonder in his concern for the imperilled life
of the mother; he guessed that she had anticipated death, and she
now hung by a thread so slight that her simple will might snap it.
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