The present, in spite of the new prosperity, was unbearable!

In vain the Mother with the patience born of her superior years and experience, assured them that time had wings, and that the days of absence would be quickly past.  To the youthful poet and the little maid who lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by him a month—­a week—­a day apart, seemed an eternity.

In the midst of their woe at the prospect a miracle happened—­a miracle and a discovery.

It fell upon a serene summer’s afternoon when the two children—­they were both that at heart—­wandered along a sweet, shady lane leading from the outskirts of town into the country.  It was to be their last walk together for who knew, who could tell how long?  The poet’s great grey eyes wore their deepest melancholy and the little maid’s soft brown ones too, were full of trouble, for had not their love turned to pain?  They spoke little, for the love and the pain were alike too deep for words, but the heart of each was filled with broodings and musings upon the love it bore the other and upon the agony of parting.

How could he leave her? the poet asked himself.  His cherished comrade whose beauty, whose purity and innocence, the stored sweets of whose nature were for him alone?  Into his life of loneliness, of lovelessness, of despair—­a life from which everyone who had really cared for him had been snatched by untimely death and shut away from him forever in an early grave—­a life where there had been not only sorrow, but bitterness—­where there had been pain and want and homelessness and desolate wanderings and longings for the unattainable—­where there had been misunderstanding and distrust and temptation and defeat—­into such a life this wee bit of maidenhood—­this true heartsease—­had crept and blossomed, filling heart and life with beauty and hope and love—­with blessed healing.

How could he leave her?  To others she seemed wrapped in timid reserve.  He only had the key to the fair realm of her unfolding mind.  How could he bear to leave her for even a little while?  How barren his life would be without her!  How shorn of all beauty and grace!

And what would her life be without him, to whom had been offered up all her beauty and the stored sweets of her nature?  Who would guard her from other eyes, that as her beauty and charm came to their full bloom might look covetously upon her?

For the first time (and the bare suggestion seemed profanation) it occured to him that a day might come when, as this slip of maidenhood walked forth in her surpassing beauty and her precious innocence and purity the eyes of a man might make note of her loveliness, her altogether desirableness—­might rest upon her with hopes of possession—­and he not there to kill him upon the spot.  What if in his absence another’s hand should be stretched to pluck his heartsease blossom—­that left unguarded, unprotected by him, another should snatch it, in its beauty, its purity and innocence, to his bosom?