Mary began dressing herself in a state of calm exaltation. Every trembling leaf on the tree, every sunbeam was like a loving smile of God, every fluttering breeze like His voice, full of encouragement and hope.
‘Mother, did you tell the Doctor what I said last night?’
‘I did, my darling.’
‘Then, mother, I would like to see him a few moments alone.’
‘Well, Mary, he is in his study at his morning devotions.’
‘That is just the time. I will go to him.’
The Doctor was sitting by the window, and the honest-hearted motherly lilacs, a-bloom for the third time since our story began, were filling the air with their sweetness. Suddenly the door opened, and Mary entered in her simple white short-gown and skirt, her eyes calmly radiant, and her whole manner having something serious and celestial. She came directly towards him, and put out both her little hands with a smile half child-like, half angelic, and the Doctor bowed his head, and covered his face with his hands.
‘Dear friend,’ said Mary, kneeling, and taking his hands, ‘if you want me, I am come. Life is but a moment. There is an eternal blessedness just beyond us, and for the little time between, I will be all I can to you if you will only show me how.’
And the Doctor—— No, young man, the study door closed just then, and no one heard those words from a quaint old oriental book which told that all the poetry of that grand old soul had burst into flower, as the aloe blossoms once in a hundred years. The ripples of that great heart might have fallen unconsciously into phrases from that one love poem of the Bible which these men read so purely and devoutly, and which warmed the icy clearness of their intellects with the myrrh and spices of ardent lands, where earthly and heavenly love meet and blend in one indistinguishable horizon line, like sea and sky.
‘Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon? clear as the sun? My dove, my undefiled, is but one. She is the only one of her mother—thou art all fair, my beloved, there is no spot in thee.’