Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/48

Rh second, a beseeching and remorseful look, as of one who implored forgiveness; but the look was gone so quickly that Margaret never fathomed its meaning, and no one else saw it.

Margaret often wished that Karl had not come home; and yet, she never said this to herself without being in the same instant conscious that in numberless, and in some hardly definable ways, her comfort had been much increased since his return. Karl had seen more of the world than Wilhelm and Annette, and had, moreover, a curious faculty of divining Margaret's preferences and tastes.

"The teacher would like this, or that," he had said to Annette, again and again; and Annette had replied, "How dost thou know? Has the teacher said it to thee? She was pleased before." But when Karl had carried his point, Annette always found that there came in a few days, a strong expression of grateful pleasure from Margaret.

And so the spring and the summer wore away, and the winter came back, and the long months had brought no apparent change in Wilhelm Reutner's house. But deep down in one heart under that roof, were working forces mightier, subtler than any which had ripened the spring into the summer, and the summer into the garnered harvest of autumn. Karl Reutner loved Margaret Warren. His love was so entirely without any hope of return, that it partook of the nature of the passion of a spiritual devotee, and was lifted to a plane of