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A Heart's First Love
141

doesn't allow people to calculate as to future events. It's just enough for me to know that of all women in the world you are the one to whom my heart goes out, and that therefore I am bound to exalt you into everything that seems perfect."

Elisabeth sighed.

"That's nice," she said, musingly. "A woman can't help liking to be told things like that. But, you know, it makes me anxious lest I shouldn't come up to the standard that's in your mind."

"I don't know how it may be," Hepworth answered. "I know so little of these things, but it seems to me that that's impossible. Perhaps love is a dream, and a dream from which one never wakes. Let us never be awakened, Elisabeth."

"I will try to make you happy," she said, suddenly turning to him. "Such love as yours deserves love in return."

But she knew beyond doubt that the fierce passionate love within him found no answering