.

"This came with yours," he said. "After this, I expected all the rest."

Faith took the open sheet, mechanically. With half-blinded eyes, she
glanced over the few earnest, fatherly, generous lines. When she came to
the last, she spoke, low.

"Yes. That is it. He saw it. It would have been no true marriage, Paul,
before Heaven!"

"Then why did I love you, Faith?" cried the young man, impetuously.

"I don't know," she said, meditatively, as if she really were to answer
that. "Perhaps you will come to love again, differently, yet, Paul; and
then you may know why this has been."

"I know," said Paul, sadly, "that you have been outgrowing me, Faith. I
have felt that. I know I've been nothing but a careless, merry fellow,
living an outside sort of life; and I suppose it was only in this
outside companionship you liked me. But there might be something more in
me, yet; and you might have brought it out, maybe. You _were_ bringing
it out. You, and the responsibilities my father put upon me. But it's
too late, now. It can't be helped."

"Not too late, Paul, for that noble part of you to grow. It was that I
came so near really loving at the last. But--Paul! a woman don't want to
lead her husband. She wants to be led. I have thought," she added,
timidly, "so much of that verse in the Epistle--'the head of the woman
is the man, and the head of the man is Christ, and the head of Christ is
God.'"

"You came _near_ loving me!" cried Paul, catching at this sentence,
only, out of all that should, by and by, nevertheless, come out in
letters of light upon his thought and memory. "Oh, Faith! you may, yet!
It isn't all quite over?"

Then Faith Gartney knew she must say it all. All--though the hot crimson
flushed up painfully, and the breath came quick, and she trembled from
head to foot, there, where she stood. But the truth, mighty, and holy in
its might, came up from heart to lip, and the crimson paled, and the
breath grew calm, and she stood firm with her pure resolve, even in her
maidenly shame, before him.

There are instants, when all thought of the moment itself, and the look
and the word of it, are overborne and lost.

"No, Paul. I will tell you truly. With my little, childish heart, I
loved you. With the love of a dear friend, I hold you still, and shall
hold you, always. But, Paul!--no one else knows it, and I never knew it
till I stood face to face with death--with my _soul_ I have come to love
another!"

Deep