y."

"Then you are a woman grown. Your dear mother was twenty-two, when--" He
choked on the words.

"When she died," whispered Barbara, her eyes luminous with tears.

[Sidenote: A Torturing Doubt]

[Sidenote: A Change]

"Yes, when she--died. I have never known why, Barbara, unless it was
because I was blind and you were lame. But all these years there has
been a torturing doubt in my heart. Before you were born, and after my
blindness, I fancied that a change came over her. She was still tender
and loving, but it was not quite in the same way. Sometimes I felt that
she had ceased to love me. Do you think my blindness could--?"

"Never, Father, never." Barbara's voice rang out strong and clear. "That
would only have made her love you more."

"Thank you, my dear. Someway it comforts me to have you say it. But,
after you came, I felt the change even more keenly. You have read in the
books, doubtless, many times, that a child unites those who bring it
into the world, but I have seen, quite as often, that it divides them by
a gulf that is never bridged again."

"Daddy!" cried Barbara, in pain. "Didn't you want me?"

"Want you?" he repeated, in a tone that made the words a caress. "I
wanted you always, and every day I want you more. I am only trying to
say that her love seemed to lessen, instead of growing, as time went on.
If I could know that she died loving me, I would not ask why. If I could
know that she died loving me--if I were sure she loved me still--"

"She did, Daddy--I know she did."

"If I might only be so sure! But the ways of the Everlasting are not our
ways, and life is made up of waiting."

Insensibly relieved by speech, his pain gradually merged into quiet
acceptance, if not resignation. "Shall you marry some day, Barbara?" he
asked, at last.

"If the right man comes--otherwise not."

"Much is written of it in the books, and I know you read a great deal,
but some things in the books are not true, and many things that are true
are not written. They say that a man of fifty should not marry a girl of
twenty and expect to be happy. Miriam was fifteen years older than
Constance and at first I thought of her, but when your mother came from
school, with her blue eyes and golden hair and her pretty, laughing
ways, there was but one face in all the world for me.

"We were so happy, Barbara! The first year seemed less than a month, it
passed so quickly. The books will tell you that the first joy dies