Love's Golden Thread

by E. C. Kenyon

Hard words! stinging words! They seemed to ring in Bernard's ears again, as, sitting there on a seat in the central walk of the Temperate House in Kew Gardens under the shade of a fine Norfolk Island pine, he thought about them sadly. No wonder was it that when they were uttered they drove him immediately--and he thought for ever--from his mother's house. Since then he had come to London and obtained an ill-paid assistant mastership in a suburban school, and now he spent all his time searching for Doris, yet in vain. "I have lost her," he said to himself, "I have lost her in this huge metropolis. Yet I forbore to prosecute her father for her sake: and for her sake I am an outcast from home, a mere usher in a school, earning my daily bread in the outskirts of this city!"

A great longing to see the girl he loved once more filled his whole heart; he longed to see her inexpressibly.

And just then she came. Talk about telepathy, about magnetism, about the hypnotism of will as people may, can anyone explain how it is that immediately before a longed-for person, or a longed-for letter arrives, that person or that letter is prominently present in the yearning mind? The same thing is seen intensified in answers to prayers. The one who prays longs unutterably for the boon he asks. It is given; and he thanks God and knows that he has received an answer to prayer. And it may also be that He Who alone knows the heart of man, is continually answering the unspoken prayers of those others who long unutterably for those things which yet they do not ask in words.

So Doris came, walking straight down the central path in the Temperate House, talking to Alice Sinclair, or rather listening, whilst Alice prattled to her about the trees and flowers.

"Look! See, there is a poor tired Londoner asleep," said the merry voice. "He has been somebody's darling once," she added in a lower tone, which Bernard could just hear.

"Hush! He will hear you. Why--oh!----" Doris opened her eyes wide, a look of apprehension came into them, and she reeled as if she would have fallen.

"Doris! Doris!" With a glad cry Bernard sprang to his feet, holding out his hands. "Doris!"

The girl recovered her presence of mind first. She touched Bernard's hands for a moment, and then, releasing them, observed to Alice, with forced calmness, "This gentleman is an old acquaintance of mine from Yorkshire."

"An acquaintance! Oh, Doris!" Bernard's voice expressed his chagrin, nay, more, his consternation. He had found Doris at last. But she was changed: she was no longer his Doris. He had slipped out of her life, and she had adapted herself to the altered circumstances. Glancing at her quickly, sharply, he perceived that she looked well, and even happy. The unwonted exercise and the fresh air of Kew had done her good and brought a pretty colour into her cheeks. She was with her dear friend Alice, and the delightfulness of mutual sympathy and love had caused her eyes to sparkle and her step to regain its buoyancy. Besides, the meeting with her lover, calmly though she appeared to take it, had brought back a tide of young life in her veins and imparted to her a sweet womanliness. Altogether she looked quite unlike the drooping, heartbroken Doris whom Bernard had last seen, and whom he had been picturing to himself as unchanged.

"Allow me to introduce you to my friend, Miss Sinclair," said Doris, disregarding his protest. "Mr. Cameron, Miss Sinclair," she said, adding, "Mr. Cameron comes from Yorkshire."