"Of course I knew all the time that it couldn't be any use ... I mean, that it was not I who ... I was only the Miller's son, and you.... Of course that is so. And I can't even make out how I dare sit here beside you and hint at it. I ought to stand before you, or kneel over there, on the ground. That's how it ought to be. But somehow.... And then all these years I have been away have made a difference. I seem to have more confidence now. For I know that I'm no longer a child and I know that you can't throw me into prison, if you wanted to. That gives me courage to speak. But you mustn't be angry with me; I'd rather keep it to myself." "No, go on. Say what you want to say." "May I? What I want to say? If you mean that, then your ring is not to stop me." "No," she said in a low voice, "it is not to stop you. No." "What? Well, but what does it mean? Oh, God bless you, Victoria, can I be right?" He sprang up and leaned over to look her in the face. "Tell me, doesn't the ring mean anything?" "Sit down again." He sat down. "Oh, but if you knew how much I have thought about you; heavens, has there ever been another scrap of thought in my heart? Of all the people I saw or heard of there was nobody in the world but you. I simply couldn't have any thought but this--Victoria is the most beautiful, the most glorious of all, and I know her! _Miss_ Victoria, you always were to me. Though of course I saw that no one was farther from you than I; but I knew you were there--and that meant so much to me--that there you were, alive, and perhaps you remembered me sometimes. Of course you did not remember me; but I have sat in my chair so often in the evening and thought perhaps you remembered me sometimes. Do you know, that seemed to throw heaven open to me, Miss Victoria, and then I wrote poems to you and bought flowers for you with all I possessed and brought them home and put them in vases. All my poems are to you, there are only a few that are not, and they are not printed. But you won't have read those that are printed either. Now I've begun on a big book. God, how thankful I am to you, for I am so full of you and that is all my joy. At every moment of the day, at night too, I see or hear something that reminds me of you. I have written your name on the ceiling and I lie and look at it; but the girl who does my room can't see it, I have written it so small to keep it to myself. It brings me a kind of joy." She turned away, opened the bosom of her dress and took out a paper. "Look here!" she said, breathing heavily. "I cut it out and kept it. You may as well know it, I read it at night. Papa showed it me first and I took it to the window to read. 'Where is it? I can't find it,' I said and turned over the paper. But I had found it and read it at once. And I was so glad."