"It's a miracle, isn't it!" she said in a low, reverent tone.
"A miracle that anything so sweet and white and perfect can suddenly come into being like this. It must have made those old lily bulbs wondah at themselves the first time they unfolded and woke up to find that such a heavenly thing had happened to them,—their hearts filled with this unearthly beauty and sweetness. Don't you suppose it made the whole world seem different, that they're not yet done wondering ovah the surprise and joy of it?"
She said it with a shy side-glance as if half-afraid he would laugh at such a childish fancy. Then she looked up startled, at the unexpected intensity of his answer.
"I know it made the whole world different," he said in such a strange exultant voice that she hardly knew it for Rob's. Dropping to one knee beside her he singled out one of the lilies just beginning to burst from its sheath, and folded it close shut again in its green leaves.
"Look!" he said in the same exultant voice. "That's the way I've been for years, with something hidden away in my heart, unrecognized at first, then its sweetness only half-guessed at. And I kept it hid, and I thought never to tell you. But this morning in church it happened to me, this miracle of blossoming. I was sitting looking at you as I've done a thousand times before, and all of a sudden it came over me, just as sweet and unexpected as the bursting of these lilies, the knowledge that life is dear and the world beautiful because you are in it. I think I've always held the thought of you in my heart, Lloyd, but it has come to such full flower now, dear, I couldn't hide it from you long, even if I tried. It seems to me now that all of my life must have been a gradual growing up for this one thing—to love you!"
Then his face, glowing with an eager gladness that almost transfigured it, paled a little before the mute misery in hers.
"Oh, Rob!" she stammered, finding it hard to believe that she had heard aright. "Don't tell me that! I've always loved you deahly, but not that way." Then as she saw all the light fade out of his eyes and his face settle into grim stern lines, she reached out both hands crying, "Oh, you deah old Bobby! I wouldn't have had it happen for the world! I can't beah to hurt you this way!"
Her eyes filled and two big tears splashed down on the hands she had thrust impulsively into his. With a gentleness that stirred her even more than his words had done, he bent and touched them with his lips.
"Never mind, dear," he said with a great tenderness that brought a sob up into her throat. "Don't think of it any more if it makes you unhappy. If you could have loved me it would have been heaven, but as you can't we won't talk about it any more. And—I still have my miracle. Nothing can change that."
She could not answer, the tears came crowding so fast, and as they walked back towards the house together all the brightness seemed to have dropped out of the April day. The sweetness of the lilies still followed them, however, and when she glanced around, wondering why, she saw that Rob still held the one he had knelt to pick for her. He twirled it absently in his fingers, but as they parted at the steps he held it out to her with a smile so tender and full of understanding, that another sob came up in her throat and she took it without a word.