She put her hand up weakly, to push
back the intruding fingers,--only to leave it tight in his grasp.
Then,--then was the first moment in which she realized the truth.
After all he did love her. Surely he would not hold her there
unless he meant her to know that he loved her. "Mary," he said. To
speak was impossible, but she turned round and looked at him with
imploring eyes. "Mary,--say that you will be my wife."
CHAPTER XVII
"My own, own Husband"
Yes;--it had come at last. As one may imagine to be the certainty
of paradise to the doubting, fearful, all but despairing soul when
it has passed through the gates of death and found in new worlds a
reality of assured bliss, so was the assurance to her, conveyed by
that simple request, "Mary, say that you will be my wife." It did
not seem to her that any answer was necessary. Will it be required
that the spirit shall assent to its entrance into Elysium? Was
there room for doubt? He would never go back from his word now. He
would not have spoken the word had he not been quite, quite
certain. And he had loved her all that time, when she was so hard
to him! It must have been so. He had loved her, this bright one,
even when he thought that she was to be given to that clay-bound
rustic lover! Perhaps that was the sweetest of it all, though in
draining the sweet draught she had to accuse herself of hardness,
blindness and injustice.
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