"Can any one ever tell that, I wonder?
I know it by this: that every thing in the whole world, even down to the smallest grass-blade, seems to me different because you are alive." She said these words with a passionate vehemence, and tears in her eyes.
Then, changing in a second to a mischievous, laughing mood, she said,-- "Yes: you make all that odds to me.

But let us not talk about loving each other, Stephen.

That's the way children do with their flower-seeds,--keep pulling them up, to see how they grow." That night, Mercy gave Stephen this sonnet,--the first words she had written out of the great wellspring of her love:-- "HOW WAS IT ?" Why ask, dear one?
I think I cannot tell, More than I know how clouds so sudden lift From mountains, or how snowflakes float and drift, Or springs leave hills.

One secret and one spell All true things have.

No sunlight ever fell With sound to bid flowers open.