'Ask yourself, Ellinor.'
Tears started to her eyes at the familiar voice, and so glad was she to see his familiar face that, but for his too probable misconception of her feelings and the eyes of passers-by, she would have thrown her arms round his neck and kissed him.
All unaware that he was so near her, Robert Wodrow had been strolling through the Park, thinking the while of a song that Ellinor had been wont to sing to him often in past days—
'Some day, some day I shall meet you—
Love, I know not when or how—
Only this, only this, that once you loved me:
Only this, I love you now, I love you now!'
The tender and passionate refrain was in his mind, and actually hovering on his lips, when the face and form of Ellinor came suddenly before him.
'So you can amuse yourself thus,' said he, picking up her pencil, 'and in spite of all the misery that has fallen on me.'
'I am working thus for daily bread, Robert; and, oh, I knew not that you had taken this terrible step.'
'Becoming a soldier?'
'Yes.'
Robert Wodrow was again face to face with the girl he loved with a love so unselfish and passionate, and so ungrudgingly given in all its fulness and tenderness, yet he made no attempt to take her hand.