“Oh,” laughed Mercy, “because you spoke as if you never expected to see my face after to-night.  That’s all.”

Stephen smiled.  “I am afraid I seem a very absent-minded person,” he said.  “I did not mean that at all.  I hope to see you very often, if I may.  Good-night.”

“Good-night, Mr. White.  We shall be very glad to see you as often as you like to come.  You may be sure of that; but you must come earlier, or you will find us all asleep.  Good-night.”

Stephen spent another half-hour pacing up and down in the snowy path in front of the house.  He did not wish to go in until his mother was asleep.  Very well he knew that it would be better that she did not see his face that night.  When he went in, the house was dark and still.  As he passed his mother’s door, she called, “Steve!”

“All right, mother.  They’ll come,” he replied, and ran swiftly up to his own room.

During this half-hour, Mercy had been sitting in her low chair by the fire, looking steadily into the leaping blaze, and communing very sternly with her own heart on the subject of Stephen White.  Her pitiless honesty of nature was just as inexorable in its dealing with her own soul as with others; she never paltered with, nor evaded an accusation of, her consciousness.  At this moment, she was indignantly admitting to herself that her conduct and her feeling towards Stephen were both deserving of condemnation.  But, when she asked herself for their reason, no answer came framed in words, no explanation suggested itself, only Stephen’s face rose up before her, vivid, pleading, as he had looked when he said, “Never again, Mrs. Philbrick?” and as she looked again into the dark blue eyes, and heard the low tones over again, she sank into a deeper and deeper reverie, from which gradually all self-accusation, all perplexity, faded away, leaving behind them only a vague happiness, a dreamy sense of joy.  If lovers could look back on the first quickening of love in their souls, how precious would be the memories; but the unawakened heart never knows the precise instant of the quickening.  It is wrapped in a half-conscious wonder and anticipation; and, by the time the full revelation comes, the impress of the first moments has been wiped out by intenser experiences.  How many lovers have longed to trace the sweet stream back to its very source, to the hidden spring which no man saw, but have lost themselves presently in the broad greenness, undisturbed and fertile, through which, like a hidden stream through an emerald meadow, the love had been flowing undiscovered.

Months after, when Mercy’s thoughts reverted to this evening, all she could recollect was that on the night of Stephen’s first call she had been much puzzled by his manner and his words, had thought it very strange that he should seem to care-so much for her, and perhaps still more strange that she herself found it not unpleasing that he did so.  Stephen’s reminiscences were at once more distinct and more indistinct,—­more distinct of his emotions, more indistinct of the incidents.  He could not recollect one word which had been said:  only his own vivid consciousness of Mercy’s beauty; her face “framed in evergreens, with the firelight flickering on it,” as he had told her he should always think of it.