He watched her that evening, fearing to broach a subject so delicate,
but pondering long and deeply, till at last she rallied him on his
unusual seriousness, and he told her what he had heard.
"Yes," she said, in reply; "Harry loved me, or thought he did; though he
was like the others--he did not understand me any better than they. But
he had always been just like a brother to me, and I could never have
loved him in any other way, and I told him so. Papa said I would learn
in time, and I think perhaps he would have insisted upon it if Harry had
lived. I was sorry I couldn't care for him as he wished; he thought I
would after a while, but I never could, for I think that kind of love is
far different from all others; don't you, Mr. Darrell?"
And Darrell, looking from the mountain-side where they were standing out
into the deep blue spaces where the stars, one by one, were gliding into
sight, answered, reverently,-"As far above all others 'as the heaven is high above the earth.'"
To him at that instant love--the love that should exist between two who,
out of earth's millions, have chosen each the other--seemed something as
yet remote; a sacred temple whose golden dome, like some mystic shrine,
gleamed from afar, but into which he might some day enter; unaware that
he already stood within its outer court.