Jane's eyes could not leave the dear face and figure in the chair. Jane's emotion trembled in Nurse Rosemary's voice.
"He is all the world to me," she said.
"Does he love you as you deserve to be loved?"
Jane bent and laid her lips on the table where his outstretched hand had rested. Then Nurse Rosemary answered: "He loved me far, FAR more than I ever deserved."
"Why do you say 'loved'? Is not 'loves' the truer tense?"
"Alas, no!" said Nurse Rosemary, brokenly; "for I fear I have lost his love by my own mistrust of it and my own wrong-doing."
"Never!" said Garth. "'Love never faileth.' It may for a time appear to be dead, even buried. But the Easter morn soon dawns, and lo, Love ariseth! Love grieved, is like a bird with wet wings. It cannot fly; it cannot rise. It hops about upon the ground, chirping anxiously. But every flutter shakes away more drops; every moment in the sunshine is drying the tiny feathers; and very soon it soars to the tree top, all the better for the bath, which seemed to have robbed it of the power to rise."
"Ah,—if my beloved could but dry his wings," murmured Nurse Rosemary. "But I fear I did more than wet them. I clipped them. Worse still,—I broke them."
"Does he know you feel yourself so in the wrong?" Garth asked the question very gently.
"No," replied Nurse Rosemary. "He will give me no chance to explain, and no opportunity to tell him how he wrongs himself and me by the view he now takes of my conduct."