"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