"No need to guess: I know. YES would contain everything in the world for me."
"You are wrong, then. It is ALL,—all. Absurd, isn't it? I must have been very young when I thought that clever. But to return: would that little word do you?"
"Say 'Yes,' Molly."
"And if I say 'No,' what then? Will you throw yourself into this small river? Or perhaps hang yourself to the nearest tree? Or, worse still, refuse to speak to me ever again? Or 'go to skin and bone,' as my old nurse used to say I would when I refused a fifth meal in the day? Tell me which?"
"A greater evil than all those would befall me: I should live with no nearer companion than a perpetual regret. But"—with a shudder—"I will not believe myself so doomed. Molly, say what I ask you."
"Well, 'Yes,' then, since you will have it so. Though why you are so bent on your own destruction puzzles me. Do you know you never spoke to me all this evening? I don't believe you love me as well as you say."
"Don't I?" wistfully. Then, with sudden excitement, "I wish with all my heart I did not," he says, "or at least with only half the strength I do. If I could regulate my affections so, I might have some small chance of happiness; but as it is I doubt—I fear. Molly, do you care for me?"
"At times,"—mischievously—"I do—a little."
"And you know I love you?"
"Yes,—it may be,—when it suits you."