Her story was finished now and my daughter added not a word. But she arose and stood before me, her eyes searching my pallid face for a verdict, if haply it might be like her own. I noticed the woman's tactics in her move, for woman's genius makes its home within her soul; she had left my arms that I might, if I would, hold them out to her again and take her back forever. But the arms have their hinges in the heart and mine was tight locked like a vise.
"Margaret," I said at last, and my voice was like the voice of age, "you do not mean that you suffered this man's caresses after he told you what you have just told me?"
Sorrow looked from Margaret's eyes.
"Suffered!" she replied, "suffered! I have learned what suffering is, God knows, but He knows it was not there I learned it. 'This man.' Oh, father, I love him—am I all alone?"
How strong is the weakness of love! There is no panoply like that which love provides, and she who bears it has the whole armour of God.
"Margaret," I pleaded, "you surely will not ruin your life and break your mother's heart and mine by any madness such as this."
"'Ruin my life,' father! what ruin can there be to the life that loves and is loved? I have no life at all apart from him. It seems so simple. I can't take back my heart!"
"Perhaps so, my daughter," I replied, "perhaps so. I know your love is no fickle thing. But Margaret, you do not propose to link your life with his, shadowed as you yourself declare it to have been from his birth?"
"Father, it is already linked. It was not I who linked our lives, nor was it he; nor was it both together—it was God. Surely He wouldn't have let me love and trust, if it was wrong. I want you to help me; I am all alone."
