But in her soul she knew that it must be something else. The long strain of the waiting days had worn anxiety to its sharpest edge. When Truth mercifully veils itself, Time—the softener—wears the veil thin until at last, when we have gained strength enough to bear, we have learned to know.
CHAPTER XX
SHIFTING SUNSHINE AND CLOUDS
Ingram and Lassie went out but not on the bridge; they did not even turn their heads that way.
"Alva says that she can see the gorge even when it's pitch-dark," Lassie said. "She says she shall see it plainly to the end of her life, wherever she may be in the world." She felt quite safe now that they were alone; she didn't even mind that embarrassing speech of Mrs. Ray's.
"Yes," said Ingram; they went calmly and happily up the road. He didn't mind the speech either, now.
"Alva and I never walk this way," Lassie said after a minute. "We always walk the other, except just a little bit to the post-office, of course."
"Yes," said the man again, and they went on, up the hill.
The peculiar charm of the ordinary mode of falling in love is that it is so simple; it requires so little effort, so to speak. If it was harder work, it might produce bigger results—results nearer the millennium than those we are now getting. Perhaps, however, the results are a lesson to be learned, and we are still so deep in the primer of that learning, that love remains the cheapest, easiest, and most common of all its tasks.