To her surprise, the young minister seemed not at all interested.  He hardly looked at her during her narrative, but reclined in the easy-chair with his head thrown back, and an abstracted gaze wandering aimlessly about the ceiling.  When she avowed her faith in the Sunday-school superintendent’s loyal partisanship, which she did with a pardonable pride in having helped to make it secure, her husband even closed his eyes, and moved his head with a gesture which plainly bespoke indifference.

“I expected you’d be tickled to death,” she remarked, with evident disappointment.

“I’ve a bad headache,” he explained, after a minute’s pause.

“No wonder!” Alice rejoined, sympathetically enough, but with a note of reproof as well.  “What can you expect, staying cooped up in here all day long, poring over those books?  People are all the while remarking that you study too much.  I tell them, of course, that you’re a great hand for reading, and always were; but I think myself it would be better if you got out more, and took more exercise, and saw people.  You know lots and slathers more than they do now, or ever will, if you never opened another book.”

Theron regarded her with an expression which she had never seen on his face before.  “You don’t realize what you are saying,” he replied slowly.  He sighed as he added, with increased gravity, “I am the most ignorant man alive!”

Alice began a little laugh of wifely incredulity, and then let it die away as she recognized that he was really troubled and sad in his mind.  She bent over to kiss him lightly on the brow, and tiptoed her way out into the kitchen.

“I believe I will let you make my excuses at the prayer-meeting this evening,” he said all at once, as the supper came to an end.  He had eaten next to nothing during the meal, and had sat in a sort of brown-study from which Alice kindly forbore to arouse him.  “I don’t know—­I hardly feel equal to it.  They won’t take it amiss—­for once—­if you explain to them that I—­I am not at all well.”

“Oh, I do hope you’re not coming down with anything!” Alice had risen too, and was gazing at him with a solicitude the tenderness of which at once comforted, and in some obscure way jarred on his nerves.  “Is there anything I can do—­or shall I go for a doctor?  We’ve got mustard in the house, and senna—­I think there’s some senna left—­and Jamaica ginger.”

Theron shook his head wearily at her.  “Oh, no,—­no!” he expostulated.  “It isn’t anything that needs drugs, or doctors either.  It’s just mental worry and fatigue, that’s all.  An evening’s quiet rest in the big chair, and early to bed—­that will fix me up all right.”

“But you’ll read; and that will make your head worse,” said Alice.

“No, I won’t read any more,” he promised her, walking slowly into the sitting-room, and settling himself in the big chair, the while she brought out a pillow from the adjoining best bedroom, and adjusted it behind his head.  “That’s nice!  I’ll just lie quiet here, and perhaps doze a little till you come back.  I feel in the mood for the rest; it will do me all sorts of good.”