If he had had his way--if all had gone prosperously with him--he would have been, still--recipient of his father's bounty, and accepted of his childish love--scarcely more than a mere, happy boy. This pain, this struggle, this first rebuff of life, crowned him, a man. Faith might have loved him, now, if she had so seen him, first. Yet the hour would come when he should know that it had been better as it was. That so he should grow to that which, otherwise, he had never been. "Faith! My father has told me. That it must be all over. That it was a mistake. I have come to hear it from you." Then he laid in her hand his father's letter. "This came with yours," he said. "After this, I expected all the rest." Faith took the open sheet, mechanically. With half-blinded eyes, she glanced over the few earnest, fatherly, generous lines. When she came to the last, she spoke, low. "Yes. That is it. He saw it. It would have been no true marriage, Paul, before Heaven!" "Then why did I love you, Faith?" cried the young man, impetuously. "I don't know," she said, meditatively, as if she really were to answer that. "Perhaps you will come to love again, differently, yet, Paul; and then you may know why this has been." "I know," said Paul, sadly, "that you have been outgrowing me, Faith. I have felt that. I know I've been nothing but a careless, merry fellow, living an outside sort of life; and I suppose it was only in this outside companionship you liked me. But there might be something more in me, yet; and you might have brought it out, maybe. You _were_ bringing it out. You, and the responsibilities my father put upon me. But it's too late, now. It can't be helped." "Not too late, Paul, for that noble part of you to grow. It was that I came so near really loving at the last. But--Paul! a woman don't want to lead her husband. She wants to be led. I have thought," she added, timidly, "so much of that verse in the Epistle--'the head of the woman is the man, and the head of the man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God.'" "You came _near_ loving me!" cried Paul, catching at this sentence, only, out of all that should, by and by, nevertheless, come out in letters of light upon his thought and memory. "Oh, Faith! you may, yet! It isn't all quite over?" Then Faith Gartney knew she must say it all. All--though the hot crimson flushed up painfully, and the breath came quick, and she trembled from head to foot, there, where she stood. But the truth, mighty, and holy in its might, came up from heart to lip, and the crimson paled, and the breath grew calm, and she stood firm with her pure resolve, even in her maidenly shame, before him. There are instants, when all thought of the moment itself, and the look and the word of it, are overborne and lost.