“If you could but love me as I love you,” he said; “but no woman can love as a man can. I will wait till Saturday. I will not once come near you till then. Good-bye! Oh, Em,” he said, turning again, and twining his arm about her, and kissing her surprised little mouth, “if you are not my wife I cannot live. I have never loved another woman, and I never shall!—never, never!”
“You make me afraid,” said Em. “Come, let us go, and I will fill your pail.”
“I want no milk. Good-bye! You will not see me again till Saturday.”
Late that night, when every one else had gone to bed, the yellow-haired little woman stood alone in the kitchen. She had come to fill the kettle for the next morning’s coffee, and now stood before the fire. The warm reflection lit the grave old-womanish little face, that was so unusually thoughtful this evening.
“Better than all the world; better than everything; he loves me better than everything!” She said the words aloud, as if they were more easy to believe if she spoke them so. She had given out so much love in her little life, and had got none of it back with interest. Now one said, “I love you better than all the world.” One loved her better than she loved him. How suddenly rich she was. She kept clasping and unclasping her hands. So a beggar feels who falls asleep on the pavement wet and hungry, and who wakes in a palace-hall with servants and lights, and a feast before him. Of course the beggar’s is only a dream, and he wakes from it; and this was real.
Gregory had said to her, “I will love you as long as I live.” She said the words over and over to herself like a song.
“I will send for him tomorrow, and I will tell him how I love him back,” she said.
But Em needed not to send for him. Gregory discovered on reaching home that Jemima’s letter was still in his pocket. And, therefore, much as he disliked the appearance of vacillation and weakness, he was obliged to be at the farmhouse before sunrise to post it.
“If I see her,” Gregory said, “I shall only bow to her. She shall see that I am a man, one who keeps his word.”
As to Jemima’s letter, he had turned down one corner of the page, and then turned it back, leaving a deep crease. That would show that he was neither accepted nor rejected, but that matters were in an intermediate condition. It was a more poetical way then putting it in plain words.