“I will, Stephen, I will,” said Mercy, resolutely, her whole face glowing with the new purposes forming in her heart.  It was marvellous how clear the relation between herself and Stephen began to seem to her.  It was rather by her magnetic consciousness of all that he was thinking and feeling than by the literal acceptance of any thing or all things which he said.  She seemed to herself to be already one with him in all his trials, burdens, perplexities; in his renunciation; in his self-sacrifice; in his loyalty of reticence; in his humility of uncomplainingness.

When she bade him “good-night,” her face was not only serene:  it was serene with a certain exaltation added, as the face of one who had entered into a great steadfastness of joy.  Stephen wondered greatly at this transition from the excitement and grief she had at first shown.  He had yet to learn what wellsprings of strength lie in the poetic temperament.

As he stood lingering on the threshold, finding it almost impossible to turn away while the sweet face held him by the honest gaze of the loving eyes, he said,

“There will be many times, dear, when things will have to be very hard, when I shall not be able to do as you would like to have me, when you may even be pained by my conduct.  Shall you trust me through it all?”

“I shall trust you till the day of my death,” said Mercy, impetuously.  “One can’t take trust back.  It isn’t a gift:  it is a necessity.”

Stephen smiled,—­a smile of sorrow rather than gladness.

“But if you thought me other than you had believed?” he said.

“I could never think you other than you are,” replied Mercy, proudly.  “It is not that I ‘believe’ you.  I know you.  I shall trust you to the day of my death.”

Perhaps nothing could illustrate better the difference between Mercy Philbrick’s nature and Stephen White’s, between her love for him and his for her, than the fact that, after this conversation, she lay awake far into the early hours of the morning, living over every word that he had spoken, looking resolutely and even joyously into the strange future which was opening before her, and scanning with loving intentness every chance that it could possibly hold for her ministrations to him.  He, on the other hand, laid his head on his pillow with a sense of dreamy happiness, and sank at once into sleep, murmuring,—­

“The darling! how she does love me!  She shall never regret it,—­never.  We can have a great deal of happiness together as it is; and if the time ever should come,” ...

Here his thoughts halted, and refused to be clothed in explicit phrase.  Never once had Stephen White permitted himself to think in words, even in his most secret meditations, “When my mother dies, I shall be free.”  His fine fastidiousness would shrink from it, as from the particular kind of brutality and bad taste involved in a murder.  If the whole truth could have been known of Stephen’s feeling about all crimes and sins, it would have been found to be far more a matter of taste than of principle, of instinct than of conviction.