But her mind did not feel the promise then.  Life seemed growing dull, insipid.  The course of the chariot wheels of progress, were impeded.  What had become of her earnest, working self, whose deepest happiness was in laboring for humanity?  Why were her hands so idle, and her mind so listless?  Question rose on question, until her mind seemed plunging into a sea whose troubled waves moaned and dashed against her life-bark, giving her spirit no repose.  Why was she floating on this restless sea?

A hand was laid upon her shoulder.  She turned, and the warm blood tinged her cheeks and brow.

“Hugh!”

“Arline!”

It was the first time for years that the sound of her own name had thrilled her so deeply.

He sat by her, took her hands in his own, and had never seemed to belong to her so much as in that hour.

“I never was more delighted to see you,” she said, unaware of the tide of emotion which his answer would awaken.

“I am glad, indeed, that it is so.  Then I do not seek you to be repulsed.  I love you, Arline.”

She was not startled by this avowal, as it might have been supposed she would have been, and yet she never thought to hear words like those pass his lips.  Like dew upon withering flowers they came, and she looked up, saying,—­

“How long has this feeling existed in your heart, Hugh?”

“Since I found I could love more than one, and yet love that one deeper and more tenderly.”

“And when was that?”

“When I first saw my home after my foreign trip.  Until then, I had but one feeling towards you, and that, you know, was a brother’s love.”

“I do.”

“But tell me,” he said, as though a new thought had impressed him, “how long have you loved me?”

“Always, Hugh.”

“Always?” he repeated.  “And yet you kept that love a secret to every soul but your own.  It is well, and in order.  I could not have known it before.  May I ever prove worthy of such devotion, such true love.  Arline, our love has not the fire of passion, but a purer flame burns upon its altar, one which consumes not, while it illumines our way.”

For many hours they sat together, much of the time in silence, their souls communing in that language which has not an earthly expression.  Soon the current of their lives mingled; the green banks of peace were in view.  Night adorned itself in the robes of morning; doubt and questioning gave place to faith and trust.

She went to his home to walk daily with one whom God had made to vibrate in soul to that of her own earnest life.  There was no crowd to witness the external rite; only a chosen few who could enter into the true spirit of the occasion, were present, while over them hovered the angelic form of the dear, departed Alice, happy indeed, that a woman’s affection and gentleness had come to bless him whom she too so truly loved.