“Dear Mrs. Worden,” I cried, “I love you very much!” and I lifted the hand I was holding to my lips and kissed it. I felt her start, her black, old eyes flashed wide open, she gave me a piercing glance and exclaimed: “What?--what’s that you say--you say--you----?”
I repeated with tears in my eyes: “I say, I love you very much,” and again I pressed my lips upon her cold and trembling hand. She closed her eyes; she pressed her thin lips close, but could not hide their quivering, and presently, in almost a whisper, she murmured: “Fifty and odd years since those words were used to me. ’Tis almost like a foreign tongue. But, oh, my girl, my girl! it’s mighty pleasant hearing. You--You--”
“I love you--I love you very much,” I slowly and lowly repeated, and she nodded her head at each word, and, smiling faintly, sank into quietude. The time was long, the clock struck more than once, and she had not moved. My hand was holding hers. I feared to release it lest I might disturb her. The fire was long out, and I was cold. I wondered if she was asleep. I had twice been deceived on that subject, and dare not venture an opinion. I longed for dawn. Leaning on the bed, holding her hand closely in mine, I raised my tired eyes and began dully following the involved design carved upon the high head-board. I do not know just when I lost the design, but I felt no shock when I realized that I was looking at the lake, though I had not turned round. I wondered faintly how it could be, but I went on gazing quietly across the heaving, tossing, gray, repellant waste, and in the changes that followed I heard certain words, but whether those words were spoken by myself or fell from the lips of the ancient woman at my side, I shall never know. I only know I heard--I saw.
At first the sky was dull and gray and heavy, like the lake; but as I looked far, far off, where the sky and water met, there came a whiteness of the purity of snow, and it grew and spread and filled up all the sky so far as eye could reach, and then I heard a voice say, faint and low: “Can it be mist?”
And at the words the whiteness became lambent with living fire. As sheet-lightning plays across the summer sky, so this soft fire flashed on, in, through, up, down and across the milky wonder, while the lake--oh, marvelous! The heavy gray was gone, the water clear, pure, brilliant, vast--lay like a mighty crystal, and the voice murmured: “As a sea of glass!”
