The Gift and the Giver
Alden looked at her keenly. "You can, Rosemary."
"How?"
"I don't know, but there's always a way, if one wants to help."
"I have nothing to give," she murmured. "I haven't anything of my own but my mother's watch, and that won't go, so it wouldn't be of any use to anybody."
"Someone said once," he continued, "that 'the gift without the giver is bare.' That means that what you give doesn't count unless you also give yourself."
"To give yourself,'" she repeated; then, all at once, her face illumined. "I see now!" she cried. "I can give myself! They'll need someone to take care of them, and I can do that. I can cook and scrub floors and keep everything clean, and—but Grandmother won't let me," she concluded, sadly.
A paragraph from Edith's letter flashed vividly into his memory: "The door of the House of Life is open for you and for me, but it is closed against her. It is in your power at least to set it ajar for her; to admit her, too, into full fellowship, through striving and through love."
His heart yearned toward her unspeakably. They belonged to one another in ways that Edith had no part in and never could have. Suddenly, without looking at her, he said: "Rosemary, will you marry me?"
What For?