his
knees, and she saw them shaking.

"She is the same and more to me," he said. "As long as I live I shall
love her."

"Do you really mean that, John?"

"Yes, and much more," he answered, firmly. "I don't blame her for
anything that she has done. She had every right to marry. I counted on
it happening even earlier."

"I see you are in earnest, and I'll tell you," Mrs. Trott said. "John,
she finally married Joel, but she did it only out of gratitude and pity.
She was grateful to him for helping _me_, do you understand? After you
left, she actually looked on me as her mother, because--because I was
_yours_. Then she pitied Joel because he was so unhappy without her.
But, la me! the other day, when she found out that you were alive, no
angel in heaven could have been happier. She tries to hide it--she
hardly knows what it means--but she can't hide it. It shows in her face,
in her laugh, in her dancing movements. She has no idea she will ever
see you again, and she doesn't dream of leaving Joel or the children,
but knowing that you are alive and doing well has made her blissfully
happy. Hers is a great, unselfish love, if there ever was one.

"You can't mean what you say," John faltered, his eyes beaming, his face
aflame, his breast heaving.

"Yes, I do," his mother assured him. "I don't know that I'm doing
exactly right to tell you, but I have told you. I can't fully make her
out on one thing, and that is whether she believes you still care for
her or not. Sometimes I think she believes that you still love her. I
don't know why she is so happy unless that is at the bottom of it."

CHAPTER XII

John rose to go. Promising to return the next day, he started back to
town. By choice he went through a strip of forest-land. In some places
the growth of trees, bushes, and vines was dense. Small streams trickled
through the moss and grass over pebbled beds, clear and cool in the
shade and warm in the open sunshine. Above the blue sky arched, with
here and there a white cloud against which some buzzards were circling
in majestic calmness. For the first time in many years he felt that he
had not loved in vain. Tilly loved him. He loved her. She had suffered;
so had he. The world had mistreated them, that was all. He remembered
something she had once said about love being eternal. How sweet the
thought now was!

* * * * *

The next morning he was at his mother's cabin again. He had