“So I see,” said the girl, half amused at John’s condition, although it was but little worse than her own.  This universal malady, love, never takes its blind form in women.  It opens their eyes.  Under its influence they can see the truth through a millstone.  The girl’s heart jumped with joy when she saw John’s truth-telling manner, and composure quickly came to her relief, though she still feigned confusion because she wished him to see the truth in her as she had seen it in him.  She well knew of his blindness, and had almost begun to fear lest she would eventually be compelled to tell him in words that which she so ardently wished him to see for himself.  She thought John was the blindest of his sex; but she was, to a certain extent, mistaken.  John was blind, as you already know, but his reticence was not all due to a lack of sight.  He at least had reached the condition of a well-developed hope.  He hoped the girl cared for him.  He would have fully believed it had it not been for the difficulty he found in convincing himself that a goddess like Dorothy could care for a man so unworthy as himself.  Most modest persons are self-respecting.  That was John’s condition; he was not vain.

“Jennie brought me your letter also,” said the girl, laughing because she was happy, though her merriment somewhat disconcerted John.

“It told me,” she continued, “that you would come.  I have it here in my pocket—­and—­and the gate key.”  She determined this time to introduce the key early in the engagement.  “But I feared you might not want to come.”  The cunning, the boldness, and the humility of the serpent was in the girl.  “That is, you know, I thought—­perhaps—­that is, I feared that you might not come.  Your father might have been ill, or you might have changed your mind after you wrote the letter.”

“No,” answered John, whose face was beaming with joy.  Here, truly, was a goddess who could make the blind to see if she were but given a little time.

“Do you mean that your father is not ill, or that you did not change your mind?” asked Dorothy, whose face, as it should have been after such a speech, was bent low while she struggled with the great iron key, entangled in the pocket of her gown.

“I mean that I have not changed my mind,” said John, who felt that the time to speak had come.  “There has been no change in me other than a new access of eagerness with every hour, and a new longing to see you and to hear your voice.”

Dorothy felt a great thrill pass through her breast, and she knew that the reward of her labors was at hand.

“Certainly,” said the self-complacent girl, hardly conscious of her words, so great was the joyous tumult in her heart, “I should have known.”

There was another pause devoted to the key, with bended head.  “But—­but you might have changed your mind,” she continued, “and I might not have known it, for, you see, I did not know your former state of mind; you have never told me.”  Her tongue had led her further than she had intended to go, and she blushed painfully, and I think, considering her words, appropriately.