The blind man's sensitive fingers lovingly sought Barbara's face. His touch was a caress. "I am sure you are like your dear mother," he said, softly. "If I could know that she died loving me, and if I could see her face again, just for an instant, why, all the years of loving, with no answer, would be fully repaid."
"She loved you, Daddy—I know she did."
The Old Doubt
"I know, too, but not always. Sometimes the old, tormenting doubt comes back to me."
"It shouldn't—mother would never have meant you to doubt her."
"Barbara," cried the old man, with sudden passion, "if you ever love a man, never let him doubt you—always let him be sure. There is so much in a man's world that a woman knows nothing of. When he comes home at night, tired beyond words, and sick to death of the world and its ways, make him sure. When he thinks himself defeated, make him sure. When you see him tempted to swerve even the least from the straight path, make him sure. When the last parting comes, if he is leaving you, give him the certainty to take with him into his narrow house, and make his last sleep sweet. And if you are the one to go first, and leave him, old and desolate and stricken, oh, Barbara, make him sure then—make him very sure."
A String of Pearls
The girl's hand closed tightly upon his. He leaned over to pat her cheek and stroke the heavy braids of silken hair. Then he felt the strand of beads around her neck.
"You have on your mother's pearls," he said. His fine old face illumined as he touched the tawdry trinket.
Barbara swallowed the hard lump in her throat. "Yes, Daddy." They had lived for years upon that single strand of large, perfectly matched pearls which Ambrose North had clasped around his young wife's neck upon their wedding day.