"Dear boy, you are so good and true--but it is a sacrifice all the same. This is the spring-time of your life, and you ought to be with the girl who makes your sunshine. It is hard for you two to be parted; and I should like her to be here; only this is a house of gloom. God knows what might happen to chill that young heart. It is better that you and I should be alone together, prepared for the worst: and in the days to come, in the far-off days, you will be glad to remember how your love lightened every burden for your dying father." "Father, my dear father!" The son uttered words of hope, declared his belief that Heaven would grant the dear patient renewed strength; but the voice in which he spoke the words of cheerfulness was broken by sobs. "My dear Allan, don't be down-hearted. I am resigned to the worst that can happen. I won't say I am glad that the end is near. That would be base ingratitude to the best of wives, to the dearest of sons, and to Providence which has given me so many good things. This world and this life have been pleasant to me, Allan; and it does seem hard to be called away from such peaceful surroundings, from the home where love is, even though through all that life there has run a dark thread. I think you have known that, Allan. I think that sensitive nature of yours has been conscious of the shadow on my days." "Yes, I have known that there was a shadow." "A stronger character would have risen superior to the sorrow that has clouded my life, Allan. I have no doubt that some of the greatest and many of the most useful men the world has known have suffered just such a disappointment as I suffered in my early manhood, and have risen superior to their sorrow. You remember how Austin Caxton counsels his son to live down a disappointed love--how he appeals to the lives of men who have conquered sorrow? 'You thought the wing was broken. Tut, tut, 'twas but a bruised feather.' But in my own case, Allan, the wing _was_ broken. I had not the mental stamina, I had not the power of rebound which enables a man to rise superior to the sorrow of his youth. I could not forget my first love. I gave up a year of my life to the search for the girl I loved--who had forsaken me in a foolish spirit of self-sacrifice because she had been told that my marriage with her would be social ruin. She was little more than a child in years--quite a child in ignorance of the world, and of the weight and measure of worldly things. We were both cruelly used, Allan. My mother was a good woman, and a woman who would do nothing which she could not reconcile to her conscience and her own ideas of piety. She acted conscientiously, after her own narrow notions, in bringing about the parting which blighted my youth, and she thought me a wicked son because for two years of my life I held myself aloof from her." "And in all that time could you find no trace of your lost love?"