Page:Love's trilogy.djvu/108

 my soul shudders with nameless terror. And yet he is right. Our love is not a vegetable to be used for household needs. Our love is a plant with lovely flowers and sweet scent. It dies quickly because its life has been too vivid.

Our love. Has he ever used the word? No, never, just as he has never said I love you. Of course I know that words are not everything. He can love me very dearly even though he does not say so, his protestations would be no proof, if they were all I had.

He calls me child. But when he takes my head in his hands, looks deep into my eyes and says, 'You darling child!' why will he not understand that the child is longing to hear the blessed words which in dreams and poems are promised to every loving child. I wonder is it caution which prevents you, my wise friend, from saying the words I—in joyful happiness—give you, whenever you wish. I wonder! for how can such caution be allied to what you told me last night. I stood in front of the mirror and saw behind me your glance, which rested on me with the utmost uncautious tenderness; and while you laid your arm round me, you said the curiously mysterious words, 'And there was a foam of white doves around her.' When I looked questioningly at you, you continued:—

'It is a poem which has sung within me from my childhood, and they are the words—there are no others—to a scene I once saw. It was a summer morning in the country, in a big yard bathed in