"Indeed!--I thought otherwise!" said Crawford, with something of disappointment in his tone. "And yet it moves your light heart very strangely." "It does," said Josephine Harris. "I never sing it or hear it sung without the tears gathering in my eyes, even if they do not fall." "And you can give no reason for this peculiar feeling?" "Oh yes," answered the young girl, "though no doubt you will laugh at my reason when you hear it." "I think not," said Crawford. "Tell me." "You think me very gay and merry," said Josephine. "So I am, but I suppose that I have something deeper in my nature, that 'crops out' occasionally, as the geologists say. I suppose that I am a visionary in some respects and among my visions is a love worthily fixed and fully returned. So few seem to find this, that I fear I shall miss it--either miss it altogether or find it too late. The thought is a sad one, and that song seems insensibly to blend with it. When I am singing 'Ever of Thee,' I am singing to my ideal love that may be escaping beyond the reach of my fingers forever." True woman of the golden heart!--God in heaven grant that to you and such as you this vision may be no dim unreality! God grant you true hearts against which your own may beat, and faithful arms upon which you may lean when the day of your probation is accomplished I And failing this fruition, the same God of love and peace grant you a truer and more enduring union with hearts that pulsate truly to your own, in that land where the sad wail of "Too Late!" is never heard and where no binding link fetters the limbs or galls the spirit! "I understand you now," said Richard Crawford. "And yet yours is a strange fancy and would be a dangerous one in many minds. But you are a brave girl, I believe, and that makes all the difference. Besides, you have health and strength, and most of the time high spirits. An invalid--a miserable cripple like myself, housed and shut away, can scarcely hope to understand or appreciate anything that comes freshly in out of God's sunshine!" The old sad and repining spirit had once more come over Richard Crawford, perhaps invoked by something in the young girl's words; and she saw the shadow almost as soon as he felt it. From that moment she was the rattle-pate again, and he caught no more glimpses into the sanctuary of her inner heart. He was to catch no more, forever; for the next time they spoke together in private was after certain events already related had occurred--after her hand had lain in another, in so significant a pressure that no time or change could ever take away the tingle of the blood which it communicated--after her eyes began to open on a new phase of destiny--and after "Ever of Thee" ceased to be a sad abstraction. Just now she rattled on, as she assisted the invalid back to his room, endeavoring to rouse his once-more sinking spirits, with all her old gayety and abandon.