"Yes. That is it. He saw it. It would have been no true marriage, Paul, before Heaven!"
"Then why did I love you, Faith?" cried the young man, impetuously.
"I don't know," she said, meditatively, as if she really were to answer that. "Perhaps you will come to love again, differently, yet, Paul; and then you may know why this has been."
"I know," said Paul, sadly, "that you have been outgrowing me, Faith. I have felt that. I know I've been nothing but a careless, merry fellow, living an outside sort of life; and I suppose it was only in this outside companionship you liked me. But there might be something more in me, yet; and you might have brought it out, maybe. You were bringing it out. You, and the responsibilities my father put upon me. But it's too late, now. It can't be helped."
"Not too late, Paul, for that noble part of you to grow. It was that I came so near really loving at the last. But—Paul! a woman don't want to lead her husband. She wants to be led. I have thought," she added, timidly, "so much of that verse in the Epistle—'the head of the woman is the man, and the head of the man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God.'"
"You came near loving me!" cried Paul, catching at this sentence, only, out of all that should, by and by, nevertheless, come out in letters of light upon his thought and memory. "Oh, Faith! you may, yet! It isn't all quite over?"
Then Faith Gartney knew she must say it all. All—though the hot crimson flushed up painfully, and the breath came quick, and she trembled from head to foot, there, where she stood. But the truth, mighty, and holy in its might, came up from heart to lip, and the crimson paled, and the breath grew calm, and she stood firm with her pure resolve, even in her maidenly shame, before him.
There are instants, when all thought of the moment itself, and the look and the word of it, are overborne and lost.
"No, Paul. I will tell you truly. With my little, childish heart, I loved you. With the love of a dear friend, I hold you still, and shall hold you, always. But, Paul!—no one else knows it, and I never knew it till I stood face to face with death—with my soul I have come to love another!"
Deep and low these last words were—given up from the very innermost, and spoken with bowed head and streaming eyes.