“The house is full of her. I like her sphere; she must not go away from us.”
Her father glanced wonderingly towards her. How strangely woven into his own life was the tissue of his child's, how vibratory had their existence become.
“Shall she not always stay, dear father? You will need some one-some one with you.”
The last words were slow and measured. What was it that seemed drifting from his grasp just then? What more of joy was receding from his life-sphere?
“Dawn, my child,” he said, “You are not going from me?”
“Why, poor frightened papa, I am not so easily got rid of. I am not going, but some one is coming, coming, I feel it, close to you, yet not one to sever us. There are some natures that bind others closer, as some substances unite by the introduction of a third element.”
“Child, you are my very breath; how can you come closer to me?”
“By having a new set of sympathies in your being aroused; by expansion. Was my mother farther removed or brought nearer to you, when she gave birth to a new claimant upon your love?”
“Brought nearer, and made dearer a thousand times.”
“Do you understand me now, father?”