wistful eyes--always with that
sense of masculine triumph which Bessie's humility had encouraged.

"Oh, Harry, I want no freedom but the freedom to love and serve you!"
cried she with a rush of tears and a hand held out to him. And then with
an irresistible, passionate sorrow she fell on her knees beside him and
hid her face on his shoulder. He put his arm round her and held her fast
for several minutes, himself too moved to speak. He guessed what this
sudden outburst of feeling meant: it meant that Bessie saw him so
altered, saw through his quiet humor into the deep anxiety of his heart.

"I'll conceal nothing from you, Bessie: I don't think I have felt the
worst of my defeat yet," were his words when he spoke at last. She
listened, still on her knees: "It is a common thing to say that suspense
is worse to bear than certainty, but the certainty that destroys hope
and makes the future a blank is very like a millstone hanged round a
man's neck to sink him in a slough of despondency. I never really
believed it until Dr. Courteney told me that if I wish to save my life
it must be at the cost of my ambition; that I can never be an advocate,
a teacher, a preacher; that I shall have to go softly all my days, and
take care that the winds don't blow on me too roughly; that I must be an
exile from English fogs and cold, let me prefer home ever so dearly;
that I must read only a little, and write only a little, and avoid all
violent emotions, and be in fact the creature I have most despised--a
poor valetudinarian, always feeling my own pulse and considering my own
feelings."

"You will have to change much more before you will come to that; and I
never knew you despise anybody, Harry," Bessie said with gentle
deprecation. "You had a tender heart from a boy, and others feel kindly
towards you."

"And come what may, my dear little Bessie will keep her faith to me?"
said Harry looking down into her sweet eyes.

"Yes, Harry."

After a pause he spoke again: "You have done me good, dear; I shall rest
better for having talked to you to-night. It is in the night-time that
thought is terrible. For months past, ever since I was ill in the
spring, the foreshadow of failure has loomed dark and close upon me like
a suffocating weight--what I must do; how I must live without being a
tax on my father, if I am to live; what he and my mother would feel;
what old friends would say; who could or would help me to some harmless
occupation; and