"I do not know what I shall do with only this slight hope for three years," he exclaimed at length, as if forced to say the words.
And Christina burst into tears.
"Dear!" he said, "I was wrong to want to hurry you; forgive me."
"Do not talk any more about it, Walter," she said in a broken voice; "I will promise to think of it at any rate."
"I must be satisfied with that," he answered; "but think kindly and tenderly, dear."
"I will, I will," she said, weeping afresh.
So Walter said his say, and went home to the farm that night more dejected than he had been once since his return from London; and not all Nellie could do to cheer him was of any avail.
"She will decide against me," he said.
He went early to his room, and locked the door on himself and his grief. Well was it for him that he could not exclude that ever-present Comforter, who is with us in spite of bars and bolts, and who is acquainted with the most secret chambers of our inmost hearts.
"And if in lonely places, a fearful child, I shrink,
He prays the prayers within me I cannot ask or think;
The deep unspoken language, known only to that love
Who fathoms the heart's mystery from the throne of light above.
His Spirit to my spirit sweet words of comfort saith,
How God the weak one strengthens who leans on Him in faith;
How He hath built a city of love, and light, and song,
Where the eye at last beholdeth what the heart had loved so
long."