"It came so close that I did believe that it would be, but there are some dreams that may not be realized on earth. Mine was such a one."
Lassie lifted her head to look into her face; she was sufficiently accustomed to the dim light by this time to be able to see distinctly the pure and noble outlines, the large, tragic eyes. She felt herself crushed into speechlessness.
"He wrote me himself," Alva continued presently; "just the merest word. I read it. I read it twice. Then I sat still for a long, long time. Lassie," she pressed the girl's hands warmly, "it was good to think that I had shown my happiness to you, for no one will ever know that I was ever happy, now. Oh, it was so long that I sat here, thinking. I told you once, how, in the first day of my supreme joy, I went into the cathedral near the hospital and thanked God on my knees for all the past and made a vow to accept with courage all that might come to me, in return for that joy. I thought, as I prayed, that I'd go forth and gladly starve and freeze till I died, if it were the purchase price of such happiness. I am remembering that hour. I will not cry out, nor weep, nor say one word. I have had him; we shall be one again. My desire has always been only to be worthy him—to be worthy him—to be worthy him! And now I have the chance to prove myself so; and I will not fail,—though the heart in my body burst, my spirit will not fail."
Lassie was still, overawed.
"I had to search to be thankful at first," Alva went on, "but now I have found something to be very thankful for. I am so glad that it came before I had told my mother. She is spared. She will never know. Every one is spared except him and me, and we are strong—we can endure. We have endured. We can endure again."
"If you only could have gone and been with him!" wailed the girl, softly.
"Oh, how I have wished that! You don't know how I have wished that! It has been sweeping through me and rending me cruelly, but he did not wish it, or he would have sent for me. And I have tried never even to wish anything unless he wished it, too. You know how I have wished that I might have stayed there with him. But he begged me to go. They would not let me stay. I had to yield!"
"Shall you go as you planned, to-night?"
"No, dear, I want to stay here alone for three or four days, and then go home,—back to my duty to my parents, you know. I never meant to leave for long. Yes," she almost whispered, "I must hurry back home, forever."
"Never to return here?"