"Then I may hope to make you my wife?" he asked in a voice of ecstacy.
She lowered her eyes again. "You ought not to make me your wife. You deserve a good woman," then she continued timidly in a low voice that was delicious to him, "Would it make you much happier, dear?"
"Dear!" How that word coming from her lips for the first time stirred him!
"Happier!" he cried. "Oh, my darling! my darling!"
A blush half of joy, half of shame, again suffused her cheeks, and she said, "For your sake, to make you happy, I would do all you willed; but still—still—I doubt very much—whether I should make you happier if I consented to be your wife."
"I have no doubt at all about it, my darling," he exclaimed; "but I don't want you to marry me, to please me only;" then looking at her face he was satisfied on that point and said no more.
He seized her hand, and they walked on through the green woods hand in hand, now conversing in low tones, now in happy silence.
They acted as most true lovers do under like circumstances, and felt, as most true lovers do, that no others since the world began could have loved so well as they. It was all so strange to Mary; too sweet, too near Heaven to endure long, she fancied. It was the first real love-making that had passed between these two. Never had their spirits been so near before; they understood each other now, and each confessed that they must for the future be all in all to each other, come what might, but Mary would make no promise to marry him yet.
He perceived that it was not mere maidenly coyness that prompted this refusal, and that there was some serious reason for it; but he was content, she loved him, loved him in a way that shut out all other possibilities of love for both.