He looked at me quickly.
"Is there anyone?" he asked.
I felt myself growing red.
"It may be only calf-love, but I don't think so, yet I have only seen her once. I don't even know her name, but the moment I saw her I knew that I loved her."
"Tell me about it," he said.
I had half feared that he would laugh at me, but he only looked rather sad and decidedly sympathetic. So emboldened, I blurted out in a shamed way the story of my meeting with the girl.
He listened in silence until I had finished, then he held out his hand to me.
"My boy," he said, "a very similar thing happened to me when I was about your age. I thought that I had lost all interest in life when she married some one else; unluckily, I had nothing in my life to fill the gap; I let myself become a mere machine in my work. I was morose, refusing to look for help to the quarter from which real assistance can come; I mean from God. And then one day, when I was thinking of all my misery, the thought flashed over me that perhaps it was a trial, perhaps I was being tested; and that idea won the day. I believed then, as I do now, that, no matter what trials come to us, there is thought and purpose behind them.
"Our finite minds cannot hope to understand the workings of an infinite one, so my advice to you is this: do with all your might those things that you think it your duty to do, and leave the results to God. Man cannot be infallible. You will make mistakes; profit by them; try to forget your own sorrows in healing those of your country.
"In time you will be able to look at everything with a fresh sense of perspective.