Her tears fell fast; but they were not like those she had lately shed, and I saw my hope brighten in them.
"Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more mindful of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together, I think my heedless fancy never would have wandered from you. But you were so much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish hope and disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely upon in everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the time the first and greater one of loving you as I do!"
Still weeping, but not sadly—joyfully! And clasped in my arms as she had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!
"When I loved Dora—fondly, Agnes, as you know"——
"Yes!" she cried, earnestly. "I am glad to know it!"
"When I loved her—even then, my love would have been incomplete, without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when I lost her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!"
Closer in my arms, nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my shoulder, her sweet eyes shining through her tears, on mine!
"I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!"
And now, I tried to tell her of the struggle I had had, and the conclusion I had come to. I tried to lay my mind before her, truly, and entirely. I tried to show her, how I had hoped I had come into the better knowledge of myself and of her; how I had resigned myself to what that better knowledge brought; and how I had come there, even that day, in my fidelity to this. If she did so love me (I said) that she could take me for her husband, she could do so, on no deserving of mine, except upon the truth of my love for her, and the trouble in which it had ripened to be what it was; and hence it was that I revealed it. And O, Agnes, even out of thy true eyes, in that same time, the spirit of my child-wife looked upon me, saying it was well; and winning me, through thee, to tenderest recollections of the Blossom that had withered in its bloom!
"I am so blest, Trotwood—my heart is so overcharged—but there is one thing I must say."
"Dearest, what?"
She laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders, and looked calmly in my face.
"Do you know, yet, what it is?"
"I am afraid to speculate on what it is. Tell me, my dear."
"I have loved you all my life!"
O, we were happy, we were happy! Our tears were not for the trials (hers so much the greater), through which we had come to be thus, but for the rapture of being thus, never to be divided more!
We walked, that winter evening, in the fields together; and the blessed calm within us seemed to be partaken by the frosty air. The early stars began to shine while we were lingering on, and looking up to them we thanked our God for having guided us to this tranquillity.
We stood together in the same old-fashioned window at night, when
