"Suppose I insist that you shall draw the water and chop the wood? My beauty, your submission is adorable if it would only last!"
"Abel, how can you?"
"I can and I will, sweetheart. I might even make a miller's wife of you if it was likely that I'd ever do anything but worship you and keep you wrapped in silk. Are you very much in love at last, Molly?"
The sound of his low laugh was in her blood, and while she leaned toward him, she melted utterly, drawing him with the light of her face, with the quivering breath between her parted lips. To his eyes she was all womanhood in surrender, yet he held back still, as a man who has learned the evanescence of joy, holds back when he sees his happiness within his grasp.
"It's too late except for one thing, Molly," he said. "If it isn't everything you're offering me—if you are keeping back a particle of yourself—body or soul—it is too late. I won't take anything from you unless I take everything—unless your whole happiness as well as mine is in your giving."
Then before the look in her face, he held out his arms and stood waiting.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Miller Of Old Church, by Ellen Glasgow