“You are mistaken. I did not know my own heart then. I never had for her the deep, ineffable affection I have for you. After this honest explanation must I leave you without hope? If I do, it matters little to me what shall become of me. I shall consider that ball from the enemy’s gun a mercy that shall put an end to my misery. But with your love, I shall be the happiest soldier in the army. I shall have an object for which to live. Can you, will you give me any hope?”
Ernest perceived that Mildred was violently agitated, and he felt encouraged.
“Tell me,” he urged, “that you will be mine, when this cruel war is over, if I come out the fiery crucible alive.”
“I am glad you have given me time to reflect about the matter,” she said at last. “I will candidly say this: if you are alive and I am, when the war ends, and the feelings of neither undergo any change, it shall be as you wish. Is that sufficient?”
So these two young people, with that pure affection, glowing in their hearts, which is sanctioned by the Allwise God, standing under the broad-spreading oaks, agreed to enter into the sacred relation which constitutes the very foundation of human society. Why should older persons, who have lost the ardor, aspirations and hopes of youth, sneer at what they are pleased to call “sickly love stories?” God implanted these sacred affections in the human heart to bind society together, and it is these which make man a gregarious animal. Is that pure love which leads to the marriage relation only evidence of a kind of folly that deserves to be ridiculed? Why do prudish, righteous-over-much people, calling themselves critics, cry out against stories which illustrate social realities, and which seek to inspire the youth of our country with proper respect and reverence for a heaven-sanctioned institution? Why is it that extremely pious people profess such an aversion to “love scenes”—scenes that are every day realities in the ranks of the purest and most refined society? Such scenes as we have described, call them “love-sick,” who will, actually transpired during the war, and many a soldier found a God-sent wife in the hospitals. These love affairs mingle with the gravest concerns of human life. Why, then, omit them from the pages of a story which is intended to be a true picture? There is nothing startling or sensational in them. Indeed, they are so old, common and customary that they derive any interest they may possess from new combinations of circumstances. Eliminate these circumstances, and nothing is left but an occurrence that transpires every hour of the day. We may here say that there is nothing in this volume that should prevent it from occupying a place on the shelves of any Sabbath-school library.