The engagement had now been going on for six months, and the marriage, it was thought, should not take place for another year. Roger did not rebel against this. Loving Ada with his whole soul, and as unselfishly as man could love, he yet saw very clearly that her love for him was not as his love for her. He was sure that gentleness, and kindness, and the educating influence of companionship and gradually growing sympathy, would teach her this love—as he had said to Michael, he had to educate her in some things (in the very art or nature of unselfish love, could he but have known it); and with a kind of sublime patience and sublime blindness, which might have been ridiculous if they had not been utterly pure of selfishness, he calmly set himself to wait out the year that had yet to elapse, and another after it, if necessary, and in that time to teach Ada to love him as he loved her. The process was not an exhilarating one; the effort was based upon the assumption of an impossibility—the assumption, namely, that such love can be taught. But Roger did not know this. Just now he and Ada had found a pastime in which both had something in common. They were rehearsing songs for a concert at which the amateur talent of the neighbourhood was to display itself for the benefit of the church schools, and incidentally for the pride and delight of its own soul and the edification of the neighbourhood at large. This great event always took place in the month of December, and on this occasion Ada was for the first time to appear on the platform. She was to sing in a duet with her patroness, Miss Wynter, and Roger was to play the accompaniment for them.