And Helen shrank back and stared at him; and then as she saw his look her own dropped lower and lower and the color mounted to her face. Mr. Howard paused for a moment or two and then very gently took one of her hands in his, and went on: “Helen,” he said,--“you must let me call you Helen--listen to me a while, for I have something to tell you. And since we both of us love the roses so much, perhaps it will be beautiful to speak of them still. I want to tell you how the man who loves the flower needs not to love it for his own sake, but may love it for the flower's; how one who really worships beauty, worships that which is not himself, and the more he worships it the less he thinks of himself. And Helen, you can never know how hard a struggle my life has been, just to keep before me something to love,--how lonely a struggle it has been, and how sad. I can only tell you that there was very little strength left, and very little beauty, and that it was all I could do to remember there was such a thing as joy in the world, and that I had once possessed it. The music that moved me and the music that I made was never your wild-rose singing, but such yearning, restless music as you heard in the garden. I cannot tell you how much I have loved that little piece that I played then; perhaps it is my own sad heart that finds such breathing passion in it, but I have sent it out into the darkness of many a night, dreaming that somewhere it might waken an echo. For as long as the heart beats it never ceases to hunger and to hope, and I felt that somewhere in the world there must be left some living creature that was beautiful and pure, and that might be loved. So it was that when I saw you all my soul was roused within me; you were the fairest of all God's creatures that I had ever seen. That was why I was so bitter at first, and that was why all my heart went out to you when I saw your suffering, and why it is to me the dearest memory of my lifetime that I was able to help you. Afterwards when I saw how true you were, I was happier than I had ever dared hope to be again; for when I went back to my lonely little home, it was no longer to think about myself and my sorrow and my dullness, but to think about you,--to rejoice in your salvation, and to pray for you in your trouble, and to wait for the day when I might see you again. And so I knew that something had happened to me for which I had yearned, oh so long and so painfully!--that my heart had been taken from me, and that I was living in another life; I knew, dear Helen, that I loved you. I said to myself long ago, before you got Arthur's letter, that I would wait for the chance to say this to you, to take your hand in mine and say: Sweet girl, the law of my life has been that all my soul I must give to the best thing that ever I know; and that thing is you. You must know that I love you, and how I love you; that I lay myself at your feet and ask to help you and watch