"You love me, Ermentrude?"
"I love you, Carleton."
"For a day, for a month or for a year?" he smiled.
"Forever," she answered.
"That's a long time," he murmured, with his eyes on a little clock hanging in the shop window before which they had stopped in one of their infrequent walks together. "A long time! That foolish little clock will beat out the hours of its short life and go the way of all things, before we shall hardly have entered upon the soul's 'forever.'"
"That clock will last our lifetime, Carleton. Afterward, love will not be counted by hours."
As she said this she turned her face his way and he saw it in its full flower with the light of heaven upon it. In later years he may have forgotten the emotions of that moment, but they were the purest, the freest from earthly stain that he was ever destined to know.
"I will love you forever," he whispered. "That little clock shall be my witness." And he drew her into the shop.
"Cuckoo!"