“Yes, dear father,” she said. “I promise you that with my whole heart. And in turn, when May comes, will you try not to think too hardly of me. I have tried to be good.”
She sat down by his side, looking rather wistfully at him.
“I have been wanting to talk to you often before about that,” he said, “so let me say once and for all what is in my mind. I disagree with you, as you know, vitally, essentially, and I believe that God tells me to disagree. But now I believe also, dear,—and this your goodness and your sweet patience all these months has taught me,—that God tells you to do as you are going to. How that is I do not understand. Perhaps that doesn’t matter so much as I used to think. But He fulfils Himself in many ways. And there, too, I have very often thought that He had to fulfil Himself in my way. It is you who have made me see that, I think.”
Helen raised shining eyes to his.
“You have made me very happy,” she said.
“And what have you done for me? There were certain days, dear, during this winter which I do not see how I could have got through without you.”
Here was an opportunity for which Helen had often sought.
“Martin?” she asked. “Oh, father, I wonder if you want Martin as much as I do.”
The strength and the tenderness died out of his face, leaving it both helpless and hard.
“I can’t see him,” he said, quickly; “I dare not. Some day, perhaps; but if I saw him now I should say—I could not, I know, help saying—what I feel. If that would do any good, I would say it; but it would do none. I should only—I should only frighten him,” he said, with an accent infinitely pathetic.