"Yes, I am in love, although as yet I could not tell what the name of my love is or will be. But in every inspired poem or perfect picture, in the soaring and sobbing of music, in sunrise and sunset, or in the sighing of the wind upon my cheek, there is something which speaks to me of her, and which beckons my spirit forth in search of her, as if by the leading of an unseen hand. And sometimes, but only in my dreaming, musing moments, my thoughts, as they wander forth into the blue expanse around me, take colour and shape, and I see her standing by a tiny cot in a cosy room where the warm firelight flickers on walls gay with pictures. I see her bend with eyes that brim with tears of blessing to fold two dimpled hands together, and to listen to a baby voice which whispers after hers the hallowed words to 'Our Father in Heaven.' And as the little voice dies away into the holy hush of the last Amen, and the little lids droop like the petals of a primrose over the tired eyes, my dream-picture changes again, and I am rambling among the walks I love so well, but no longer alone, no longer wrapt in melancholy musing for--now trudging cheerily along with hand clasped fast in mine and face upturned to listen, now darting bird-like aside in search of fly or flower--there journeys ever with me my little son and hers. We wander merrily through that sunny stretch of meadow--the children's meadow, as we call it--where the grass grows lush and long, and where the blithe day through the skylark ever sings and soars; we cross the stile and enter the shady shelter of the 'Lover's Lane,' dark, as it always is, with the dense green of overarching ash and hazel, and then we reach that sunny, wind-swept and sloping hillside, where he and I love to linger, watching the slow sailing of stately clouds above, or listening to the tinkle and purl of the brooklet which ripples over the pebbles in the valley far below. In the joyous wonder of the child heart beside me at all that is beautiful in this beautiful world, I forget the books and the making of books with which my brain is busied; and when the first flush of rapture is over and the little brain has sobered into calm, I tell my boy of the Brother-Lord who loves him, and who was once such a little child as he, and of the dear Lord-Father by whom all that is beautiful was made."