He had been standing still, bowed under this intolerable weight of humiliation, crushed beneath this overwhelming burden of self-reproach. Now he went slowly onward, unseen and unheard, through the gathering darkness and the deep dust. When he came within sight of the light shining behind the white curtain over the one window of Doris's humble home, he paused again and leaned on the fence and looked at the window for a long time. He felt that he could not go nearer it that night, that he could not face Doris until he had more fully faced his own soul. As he gazed at the white light, he thought how like it was to the girl herself, so simple, so clear, so steady, so open, shielded only by the single whiteness of purity. A soft breeze coming over the hills rippled the silver leaves,--grown as dark now as the sombre plumes of the cypress tree,--and stirred the white curtain as if with spirit hands. And then as he lingered there came to him a wonderful change of feeling. The thought of her stole softly to him through the warm starlight, sweet as the breath of the white jessamine. A great, deep tenderness welled up in his heart and went out to her, sweeping all before it--all untrue dreams of ambition, all false thinking, all self-delusion. Then he knew that he loved her; then he knew that he had loved her from the instant that his eyes had fallen upon her, a vision of beauty framed in roses; then he knew that he would love her with the highest and finest love that was his to bestow--so long as he should live. When this bitter-sweet truth came home to his troubled heart, it brought with it a calm, tender sadness. Even as he recognized it he felt that his own blind folly, his foolish conceit of wisdom, had robbed him of whatever chance, whatever hope he might have had, of winning her love in return. The fatal, unforgivable blunders into which he had fallen so blindly must forever stand in the way. And he hardly dared think there ever could have been any hope, even had he not so hopelessly offended. For humility is always the hall-mark of true love. To be loved by the one beloved is always true love's most wondrous miracle.