Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/367

And everything went on the same as before. Tom's eyes told just as plainly as ever that he loved the very spot where Susan stood. Bell looked on unconscious. Edward Balloure looked on in sullen despair. The world began to say that Tom Lawton cared about Susan Sweetser, and how absurd it was! He might know that a brilliant girl like that was never going to marry a plodding, middle-aged fellow like him; and Susan, meanwhile,—poor, perplexed Susan!—was perpetually asking herself whether, after all, Tom had really loved her or not. Weeks, months, a year went by, and to outside observers no change had come to any member of the little group. But the years write their records on human hearts as they do on trees, in hidden inner circles of growth, which no eye can see. When the tree falls, men may gather around and count the rings about its centre, and know how many times its sap has chilled in winter and glowed in spring. We wrap ourselves in the merciful veils of speech and behavior, and nobody can tell what a year has done to us. Luckily, even if we die, there is no sure sign which betrays us. As I said, at the end of a year no change which an outside observer would detect had come to any member of the little group. But if at any moment the hearts of Susan Sweetser, Tom Lawton, and Edward Balloure had been uncovered to the gaze of the world, there would have been revelations startling to all.