He pleaded with her sometimes, but to no avail—at least none that was perceptible to him. The water beating against a rock does not realize its own victories; but we see the honeycombed cells that attest its persistence, and predict that some day the water will have won a way for itself over the fragments of the rocky barrier. But the springs run dry sometimes, and the rock remains unconquered, but barren and parched, thirsting for the water that loved it once. To each successive plea Myron felt it harder and harder to say "No."
When Homer asked for her love, his face shone with that seraphic light that never yet "has shone on land or sea," and she felt it very bitter to banish it. Sometimes he touched her to tears. Sometimes, dry-eyed, she begged him so piteously to desist that he felt himself a cur to have urged her.
Indeed, in those calm spring weeks his heart was the abode of perpetual conflict, the place of passion and pain, the home of love and longing—
"O fretted heart, tossed to and fro,
Rest was nearer than thou wist."
Through all these turbulent times Homer bore himself well. He had again the old genial manner, the old patience, the old generosity. His people presumed upon his unfaltering good-temper, and made their demands more and more exacting. He gave all they sought of his time, trouble, and money, and to their reproaches replied not again.
Upon every subject under the sun he heard them patiently, save the one subject next his heart. That he held sacred.
His mother had said to him one day:
"You'll never marry her, Homer?"
"God knows I'm afraid I won't," he said.
"Do you mean to say——" began his mother.