'Oh,' she said, 'if you knew how I loved him, mother!'
'Did you, my darling?' said the tender mother, and never showed the ache that was at her heart because her child had kept so great a thing as this from her confidence.
'Ever since he went I have been loving him,' Hermie said, 'and yet when he told me, I sent him away, and he was so miserable. I am sure that is why he went to the war.'
'And you thought you did not care for him, then?' said Mrs. Cameron. 'Well, darling, that was not your fault.'
'Oh, it was—it was!' said Hermie. 'You don't understand, of course. You never could. But I shall be miserable now all my life!'
'You found you had made a mistake, and you cared for him after all?' said Mrs. Cameron.
'I didn't know quite how much till to-day!' sobbed Hermie. 'I have kept thinking of him and thinking of him ever since he went; out now—oh, now it is too late! I know I shall love him till I die.'
The mother's heart ached, as all mothers' must do when their children have to stand alone in a grief, and there can no longer be any kissing of the place to make it well.
'It seems as if I have been blind,' went on the girl, sometimes wiping the tears away and hiding her swollen eyes, sometimes letting them trickle unchecked down her cheeks. 'I can't tell you how silly and small I have been—thinking men ought to be just like men in books, and never looking at what they really are. Oh, he was so good, such a brave fellow; ever since he has gone, people are always telling different brave or kind things he has been doing ever since he was a boy. And, just because he wore clothes and ties I didn't like, and sometimes knocked things over, I——'
Her voice choked, and she fell to sobbing again heart-brokenly.