“He is always there, mother,” said Julia in a low, sweet voice, “always. How I remember him, with his soft dark hair, and his dark eyes! I think I used to be a little afraid of him.”
“Because he seemed stern, my child, that was all. You loved him very dearly.”
“He shall see how I will love him when he returns, mother,” she added after a pause. “Do you think he gives much thought to us?”
“Think, my darling? I know he prays day by day for the time when he may return. Ah!” she sighed to herself, “he reproached me once with teaching his child not to love him. He could not say so now.”
“I wonder how long it will be?” said Julia thoughtfully. “Do you think he will be much changed?”
She glanced up at the picture.
“Changed, Julia?” said her mother, taking the sweet, earnest face between her hands, to shower down kisses upon it, kisses mingled with tears, “no, not in the least. It is twelve long years since, now; heaven only knows how long to me! Years when, but for you, my darling, I should have sunk beneath my burden. I think I should have gone mad. In all those years you have been the link to bind me to life—to make me hope and strive and wait, and now I feel sometimes as if the reward were coming, as if this long penance were at an end. My love! my husband! come to me! oh, come!”
She uttered these last words with so wild and hysterical a cry that Julia was alarmed.
“Mother,” she whispered, “you are ill!”
“No, no, my child; it is only sometimes that I feel so deeply stirred. Your words about his being changed seemed to move me to the quick. He will not be changed; his hair will be grey, his face lined with the furrows of increasing age and care; but he himself—my dear husband, your loving father—will be at heart the same, and we shall welcome him back to a life of rest and peace.”