The firm voice of Daniel Clark gave way as he uttered the name of his child. His eyes grew dim with tears, and he reached forth his trembling arms. She sprang with a single bound to his embrace, she wreathed his neck strongly with her arms, and pressed upon his lips, his cheeks, and his moist eyes, kisses that, from the lips of a beautiful child, seem like the pouring of dew and sunshine from the cup of a flower. “Oh, you are come again!” she said, placing her warm hands on each side his face, and looking with the smiling confidence of childhood into his eyes. “They told me that you would not come to see us any more for a long, long time.” “And are you glad to see me, darling?” said Mr. Clark, drawing his hand caressingly down the disheveled brightness of her hair. “You seem glad, my little Myra?” “Seem—why—I am glad—so very, _very_ glad, my own, own—” the child hesitated. “Papa—will you not call me papa, this once?” said the agitated father, and upon his pale cheek there came a flush, as he said this to the child. “Oh, but they tell me that you are my godfather, and that is not a papa, you know,” said the child, shaking her head with an air of pretty thoughtfulness. “Perhaps it is as well,” murmured the father, and his look grew sad. Myra bent down and looked into his eyes, smiling. “Don’t look so sorry,” she said; “I will call you papa, if you like. Papa! dear papa! there, now!” But even the childish caress, accompanied as it was by a voice and look of the most winning sweetness, failed to dispel the sadness that had fallen upon the father’s heart. Perhaps the very loveliness of the child did but deepen that sadness, by reminding him of its mother. Let this be as it may, Mr. Clark sat down by the fountain with the little girl in his arms, but he remained silent, thus chilling the little creature whose arms were about his neck, and she too became hushed, as it were, by the gloom into which he fell. During several minutes the father and child remained thus wrapped in silence. At last he spoke in a low and troubled voice, kissing the forehead of the child: “Myra, do you love me?” “Indeed, indeed I do,” said the little girl, laying her cheek to his. “Better almost than anybody else in the wide world, if you _are_ only my godfather.” “And whom—” here Mr. Clark’s voice faltered—“and whom can you love better, Myra?” “Oh,” said the child, shaking her head with a pretty mysterious air, “there is somebody that I love _so_ much, a pretty, beautiful lady, who comes to me so often, and so strangely, just like one of the fairies nurse tells me about. Sometimes she will be a long, long time, and not come at all. Then, while I am playing among the trees, she will be close to me before I think of it. She kisses me just as you do, and once—that, too, was so like—” the child paused, and seemed pondering over something in her mind. “What was so like, Myra?” said Mr. Clark, in a faint voice, for his heart misgave him.