“Yet sometimes, my father, I hardly dare to think how much there is to know. Sometimes when I lie by your side in the darkness, my father, and something seems to have happened to the moon, I almost feel that I shall never be able to know all.”
“Thou art quite resolved, my brave one, to know all?”
“Oh yes, my father,” said the boy, and his eyes grew round with surprise at the question.
“Wherefore, beloved?”
“I must, I must!” said the boy, and his eyes grew dark with bewilderment. “Dost thou not know, O my father——” He checked his words of surprised explanation shyly and suddenly.
“I know,” said his father gently, “thou art one of great projects.”
“I had forgotten, O my father,” said the boy, a little timorously, “that I had not revealed them unto you.”
“Pray do so, my beloved,” said the man softly.
The boy faltered. A shy blush overspread the pallor of his cheeks.
“I am to be one of the great ones of the earth, my father,” he said, with the sensitive gaze of a girl.