ike to be mine, but he did not love me. There were
bitter words on both sides, but mine were bitterest. And so, at last,
we parted. I could show you the flag on which he stood when I saw his
face for the last time--the last, until I saw it yester-morrow. Others
had seen him, and knew him not, through the changes of years. Even your
father did not know him, though they had been bred up well-nigh as
brothers. But mine eyes were sharper. I had not borne that face in
mine heart, and seen it in my dreams, for all these years, that I should
look on him and not know it. I knew the look in his eyes, the poise of
his head, the smile on his lips, too well--too well! I reckon that
between that day and this, a thousand women may have had that smile upon
them. But I thought of the day when I had it--when it was the one light
of life to me--for I had not then beheld the Light of the World.
_Milly_, didst thou think me cruel yester-morrow?--cold, and hard, and
stern? Ah, men do think a woman so,--and women at times likewise--think
her words hard, when she has to crush her heart down ere she can speak
any word at all--think her eyes icy cold, when behind them are a storm
of passionate tears that must not be shed then, and she has to keep the
key hard turned lest they burst the door open. Ah, young maids, you
look upon me as who should say, that I am an old woman from whom such
words are strange to you. They be fit only for a young lass's lips,
forsooth? Childre, you wis not yet that the hot love of youth is nought
to be compared to the yearning love of age,--that the maid that loveth a
man whom she first met a month since cannot bear the rushlight unto her
that has shrined him in her heart for thirty years."

Aunt _Joyce_ tarried a moment, and drew a long breath. Then she saith
in a voice that was calmer and lower--

"_Anstace_ told me I loved not the _Leonard_ that was, but only he that
should have been. But I have prayed God day and night, and I will go on
yet praying, that the man of my love may be the _Leonard_ that yet shall
be,--that some day he may turn back to God and me, and remember the true
heart that poured all that love upon him. If it be so, let the Lord
order how, and where, and when. For if I may know that it is, when I
come into His presence above, I can finish my journey here without the
knowledge."

"But it were better to know it, Aunt _Joyce_?" saith _Helen_ tenderly.
Methinks the tale had stirre