“Only a dream—but I hoped it might prove a reality. I—I—loved her so dearly in my dream because she was so sweet and tender,” faltered the girl with tears of disappointment starting to her eyes while her father gazed at her in secret wonder, longing to know what strange events had preceded her supposed death.
He could not bear to see her yearning for the mother who had been so cruel to the father, but he did not know how to change that instinct of love; he could only say coldly:
“Do not think any more of your dream, child. It was very misleading.”
“Perhaps so,” she murmured humbly, believing it must be true what he said, for she could recall another dream that was, indeed, too subtly sweet to be aught but illusion.
In that strange dream a voice all too fatally dear to her heart had murmured words of love and tenderness, vowing fealty to her in heaven:
I love you, dearest one, all the while,
My heart is as full as it can hold,
There is place and to spare for the frank young smile,
And the red young mouth and the hair’s young gold,
So, hush, I will give you this leaf to keep,