The poor neglected girl only felt this, but could not express it.
She knelt on her bed, clasped her hands on her breast, raised her face, and collected every thought of her heart—how ought one to pray? What may be that word, which should bring God nearer? What sayings, what enchantments could bring the Great Being, the all-powerful, down from the heavens? What philosophy was that, which all men concealed from one another and only spoke of to each other in secret, in the form of letters, which opened to erring humanity the road leading to the home of an invisible being? How did it begin? How end? What an awful heart-agony, not to know how to pray,—just to kneel so with a heart full of crying aspirations, and dumb lips! How weak the voice of a sobbing sigh, how terribly far the starry heavens—who could hear there?
Yet there is One who hears!
And there is One who notes the unexpressed prayer of the silent suppliant, One who hears the unuttered words.
Poor girl! She did not imagine that this feeling, this exaltation, was prayer—not the words, not the sermon, not addresses, not the amens. He who sees into hearts—reads from hearts, does not estimate the elegance of words.
In the same hour that the suffering girl knelt thus dumbly before the Lord of all happiness, that man whom she had worshipped in her heart so long, whom she must worship forever, was sitting just as sleeplessly beside his writing-table, separated from her only by two walls, and was thinking and writing about her, and often wiped his eyes that filled betimes with tears.
He was writing to his mother about his engagement.
About the poor gypsy girl.
In the dim light of the beautiful starry night twelve horsemen were following in each others' tracks among the reeds of the morass.