As I lay there looking at him, he turned and regarded me. His deep eyes glowed with a soft, calm light; but yet, I know not why, they expressed more love than I had ever seen in them before. He used to love us nervously and passionately. He had now the look of one whose whole nature is saturated with rest, and to whom the fitfulness, distrust, or distress of intense feeling acting upon a super-sensitive organization, were impossible. As he looked towards me, he smiled. He had one of the sweetest smiles that ever illuminated a mortal face. “Why, Father!” I said aloud. He nodded encouragingly, but did not speak. “Father?” I repeated, “Father, is this _you_?” He laughed a little, softly, putting up one hand and tossing his hair off from his forehead--an old way of his. “What are you here for?” I asked again. “Did Mother send for _you_, too?” When I had said this, I felt confused and troubled; for though I did not remember that he was dead--I mean I did not put the thought in any such form to myself, or use that word or any of its synonyms--yet I remembered that he had been absent from our family circle for a good while, and that if Mother had sent for him because I had a brain fever, it would have been for some reason not according to her habit. “It is strange,” I said. “It isn’t like her. I don’t understand the thing at all.” Now, as I continued to look at the corner of the room where my father was sitting, I saw that he had risen from the cushioned window-seat, and taken a step or two towards me. He stopped, however, and stood quite still, and looked at me most lovingly and longingly; and _then_ it was that he held out his arms to me. “Oh,” cried I, “I wish I could come! But you don’t know how sick I am. I have not walked a step for over two weeks.” He did not speak even yet, but still held out his arms with that look of unutterably restful love. I felt the elemental tie between parent and child draw me. It seemed to me as if I had reached the foundation of all human feeling; as if I had gone down--how shall I say it?--below the depths of all other love. I had always known I loved him, but not like that. I was greatly moved. “But you don’t understand me,” I repeated with some agitation. “I _can’t_ walk.” I thought it very strange that he did not, in consideration of my feebleness, come to me. Then for the first time he spoke. “Come,” he said gently. His voice sounded quite natural; I only noticed that he spoke under his breath, as if not to awake the nurse, or any person who was in the room.