“The violets showed me the way.”
She glanced at the posy in his button-hole and smiled.
“Yes, I gave them to Adam, but I didn’t think you would guess. I enjoyed your work for an hour to-day, and I have no words strong enough to express my admiration.”
“There is no need of any. Tell me about yourself; what have you been doing all this year?” he asked, watching with genuine satisfaction the serene and sunny face before him, for discontent, anxiety, and sadness were no longer visible there.
“I’ve been working and waiting,” she began.
“And succeeding, if I may believe what I see and hear and read,” he said, with an expressive little wave of the book as he laid it down before her.
“My diary! I didn’t know I had lost it. Where did you find it?”
“By the brook where I stopped to rest. The moment I saw your name I shut it up. Forgive me, but I can’t ask pardon for reading a few pages of that little gospel of patience, love, and self-denial.”
She gave him a reproachful look, and hurried the tell-tale book out of sight as she said, with a momentary shadow on her face,—
“It has been a hard task; but I think I have learned it, and am just beginning to find that my dream is ‘a noonday light and truth,’ to me.”