"We have known each other many summers and many winters."

"And now we are old, sensible, hard-working people; having given up all nonsense we are discovering the sense there is in sense."

He turned his face with a listening look in his eyes.

"Did not some one come in? Shall we be disturbed?"

"Not unless we wish to be. It is only Mr. Hammerton, he is a great friend of father's. He renews his youth in him."

"Is he not _your_ friend?"

How well she remembered his suspicious, exacting questions!

"He is my best friend," she said proudly.

"I wish I was in heaven," he said, his voice grown weak. "Every thing goes wrong with me; every thing has gone wrong all my life. Father is in a rage because I will not stay home; he offered me to-day the deed for two hundred acres as a bribe. I should be stronger to-day but that he worked my life out when I was a growing boy."

"A country life is best for you. Your old homestead is the loveliest place around, with its deep eaves and dormer-windows and vines. That wide hall is one of my pleasant recollections, and the porch that looks into the garden, the blue hills away off, and the cool woods, the thrushes and the robins and the whip-poor-will at twilight; that solitary note sets me to crying, or it used to when I dreamed dreams and told them to Laura! I hope that Laura will love the place too well to leave it; it is my ideal of a home; much more than splendid Old Place is."

"I will stay if you will come and live in it with me," he said quietly.

"I like my own home better," she answered as quietly. "Are you stronger than you were?"

"Much stronger. I have not had one of those attacks since March. Lake warns me; but I am twice the man that he is! How he coughed last winter!

I haven't any thing to live for, anyway."

"It is very weak for you to say that."

"Whose fault is it that I am so weak? Whose fault is it that my life is spoiled? You have spoiled every thing for me by playing fast and loose with me."

"I never did that," she answered indignantly. "You accuse me wrongfully."

"Every time you speak to me or look at me you give me hope; an hour with you I live on for months. O, Tessa," dropping his head in both hands, "I have loved you all my life."

"I know it," she said solemnly. "Can't you be brave and bear it?"

"I _am_ bearing it. I am bearing it and it is killing me. You never had the water ebb and flow, ebb and flow when you were dying of thirst.

Women can not suffer; they are heartless, all their heart is used in causing men to suffer. A touch of your hand, the color in your cheek, a dropping of your eyes, talks to me and tells me a lie; and then you go up-stairs and kneel down to Him, who is the truth-maker! You are a covenant-breaker. You have looked at me scores of times as if you loved me; you have told me that you like to be with me; and when I come to you and ask you like a man to become my wife, you blush and falter, and answer like a woman-_no_. I beg your pardon-"

The tears stood in her eyes but would not fall.

"I did not come here to upbraid you. I did not start from home with the intention of coming; but I saw you through the window with your arms around your father's neck and I thought, 'Her heart is soft to-night; she will listen to me.' I was drawn in, as you always draw me, against my better judgment. I shall not trouble you again; I am going away.

Tessa," suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hing both hands, "if you are so sorry for me, why can't you love me?"

"I don't know," not withdrawing her hands, "something hinders. I honor you. I admire you. Your love for me is a great rest to me; I want to wrap myself up in it and go to sleep; I do not want to give it up-no one else loves me, and I _do_ want somebody to love me."

"I will love you; only let me. Marry me and I will stay at home; I will do for you all that a human heart and two human hands can do; I will _be_ to you all that you will help me to be."

"But I do not want to marry you," she said perplexed. "I should have to give up too much. I love my home and the people in it better than I love you."

"I will not take you away; you shall have them all; you shall come to them and they shall come to you; remember that I have never loved any one but you-" the great tears were rolling down his cheeks. "I am not worth it; I am not worthy to speak to you, or even to hold your hands like this." He broke down utterly, sobbing wearily and excitedly.

"Don't, oh, don't," she cried hurriedly. "I may grow to love you if you want me to so much, and you are good and true, I can believe every word you say-not soon-in two or three years perhaps."

His tears were on her hands, and he had loved her all her life; no one else loved her, no one else ever would love her like this; he was good and true, and she wanted some one to love her; she wanted to be sure of love somewhere and then to go to sleep. Her father should see her married before he died; her mother would never-

"You have promised," he cried, in a thick voice. "You have promised and you never break your word."

"I have promised and I never break my word; but you must not speak of it to any one, not even to Laura, and I will not tell father, or Gus, or Miss Jewett, or Dine; no one must guess it for one year-it is so sudden and strange! I couldn't bear to hear it spoken of; and if you are very gentle and do not _try_ to make me love you-you must not kiss me, or put your arms around me, you know I never did like that, and perhaps that is one reason why I never liked you before-you must let me alone, let love come of itself and grow of itself."

"I will," he uttered brokenly, and rose up trembling from head to foot.

"May G.o.d bless you!-bless you!-bless you!"

It was better for him to leave her; the strain had been too great for both.

"I must be alone; I must go out under the stars and thank G.o.d."

She lifted her face to his and kissed him. How unutterably glad and thankful she was in all her life afterward that she gave that kiss unasked.

"G.o.d bless you, my darling," he said tenderly, "and He _will_ bless you for this."

Bewildered, not altogether unhappy, she sat alone while he went out under the stars.

Was this the end of all her girlhood's dreams?

Only Felix Harrison! Must she pa.s.s all her life with him? Must her father and mother and Gus and Dine be not so much to her because Felix Harrison had become more-had become most? And Ralph Towne? Ought she to love Felix as she had loved him?

The hurried questions were answerless. She did not belong to herself; not any more to her father as she had belonged to him half an hour since with both her arms around his neck. Love const.i.tuted ownership, and she belonged to Felix through this mighty right of love; did he belong to her through the same divine right?

He was thanking G.o.d and so must she thank Him.

"Tessa," called her father, "come here, daughter!"

With the candle in her hand, she stood in the door-way of the sitting-room. "Well," she said.

"With whom were you closeted?" asked Mr. Hammerton, looking up from the chess-board.

The effort to speak in her usual tone lent to her voice a sharpness that startled herself.

"Felix Harrison."

"Your old tormentor!" suggested Mr. Hammerton.

"Who ever called him that?" She came to the table, set the candlestick down and looked over the chess-board.

"She has refused him again," mentally decided Mr. Hammerton, carefully moving his queen.

"I called you, daughter, because Gus withstood me out and out about 'Heaven doth with us as we with torches do.' Find it and let his obstinate eyes behold!"