such as comes to me through your eyes, to help
me--and you love me--you are my precious wild flower--I shall live for
you and my little mother."

No word had escaped my lips, and now he paused, and looking at me, said:

"Tell me if you do not love me!--tell me, Emily."

Why did I--how could I answer him as I did--so cold; my voice fell upon
my own ear as I said slowly:

"I don't know, Louis--you are so strange."

What an answer! He quivered and the tears came to his eyes; he dashed
them aside and said:

"How long shall I wait for you? say it now and help me; your spirit
loves me; I can hear it speak to me."

I thought for the moment he was crazed. He divined my thought and said:

"No, not crazy, but I want your help."

"Oh, Louis!" I cried, "I don't know, I am so ignorant--why was I born
so? don't treat me unkindly, you are dear to me, dear, but I can't
talk."

"Never, never say so again."

He seemed taller as he paused in his walk, and released the firm hold he
had kept of my arm, said slowly:

"God waits for man, and angels wait, and I will wait, and you will tell
me sometime--say no word to my little mother"--and he kissed my
forehead, a tear-drop falling on me from his eyes, and we walked
silently and slowly home.

I sought my room, and crying bitterly, said to myself, "Emily Minot must
you always do the very thing you desire not to do?"

When my eye met Louis' at the table next morning, I felt as if I had
committed an unpardonable sin. My whole being had trembled with the deep
respect and admiration I had felt for him since the moment we met, and I
certainly had given him cause to understand me to be incapable of
responding to his innermost thought. I felt he would treat me
differently, but a second look convinced me that such was not the fact.
His noble nature could not illtreat any one, and I only saw a look of
positive endurance, "I am waiting," photographed on his features, and
made manifest in all his manner toward me, and a determined effort to
put me at ease resulted at last in forcing me to appear as before, while
all the time a sharp pain gnawed at my heart, and, unlike most girls, I
was not easy until I told my mother of it all.

She stroked my dark hair and said:

"You and he have only seen nineteen short years. Wisdom is the ripened
fruit of years; you cannot judge of your future from to-day."

That comforted me, and I felt better in my mind. I planned something to
say to Louis, b