When, in these moods, he came into Mercy's presence, and found her radiant, buoyant, mirthful even, he wondered; and sometimes he questioned.

He strove to find out the secret of her joy.

There seemed to him no legitimate reason for it.
"Why, to see that I make you glad, Stephen," she would say.

"Is not that enough?
Or even, when I cannot make you glad, just to love you is enough." "Mercy, how did you ever come to love me ?" he said once, stung by a sense of his own unworthiness.

"How do you know you love me, after all ?" "How do I know I love you!" she exclaimed.