"Oh wondrous Providence! There lived on earth, though far from me and unknown, a soul that had thoughts of love for me while I, alone and a stranger to the world, prayed within convent-walls. Was it you who were present to me in the spirit when I flung myself with fevered longing down in the grass, or on a grave, and believed that some response must come to my soul's cry, either from above, or from the abyss below! Was it you?"
"Indeed it must have been, for I often shouted your name to the distance, and thought you would hear it and come. We waited for you, day after day, but at last my mother could wait no longer and she took me to Burgeis, to be nearer to you. Yes, and when I saw a pretty little boy, with dark curls and brown eyes, I asked my mother if you had not looked like that, and if she said 'yes,' I would take him up and nurse him and kiss him and call him Donatus. And when I saw you in the procession, I did not know you, because you were no longer a boy, but tall and dignified. I took you for an angel; but mother knew you again. Still, now I have you with me and you are so poor and helpless I can quite make you out to be the same with the little boy I used to picture. Oh! I wish you were still so little."
"Because then I could carry you in my arms and shelter you in my bosom from wind and weather and every danger."
"Oh merciful Providence--what wonders dost Thou create. Yes, you are a wonder, you pure and holy child-spirit. It is such as you that God in his mercy sends to lonely pilgrims on the way to Heaven to fare forth with them and strew the path of death with flowers. All my wild longing was but a vague seeking for you--pure and holy child--for you too are not of this world; you, like me, are not of the earth, earthly; you, like me, have no hope but in the other world."
The girl leaned her face on his arm and wept softly, but she was weeping for happiness; for had he not himself said that God had created them for each other, and whether for life or for death, it was all the same to her. They were two stricken souls flung together into a dark sea; for an instant they might cling to each other, and then, clasped in that embrace, must sink in the hopeless depths--but that one moment was worth a whole lifetime.