"In anything else," said the housekeeper. "In anything else, my dear; only not in marriage! My dear, it is not simply giving up one's happiness; it is a long torture! No, you owe it to yourself; for in that way you could never grow to be what you might be. My dear, I have seen it tried. I have known a woman who married so, thinking that it would not matter so much; she fulfilled life's duties nobly, she was a good wife and mother and friend; but when I asked her once, after she had told me her story, how life had been to her?—I shall never forget how she turned to me and said, 'It has been a hell upon earth!' Miss Dolly, no good father and mother would buy anything at such a price; and no man that really loved a woman would have her at such a price; and so, if you follow the rule, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them'—you will never marry in that way."
There was a little silence, and then Dolly said in an entirely changed tone, "You have cleared up the mist, Mrs. Jersey."
"Then there is another thing," the housekeeper went on. She heard the change in Dolly's voice, out of which the anxiety had suddenly vanished, but she was willing to make assurance doubly sure. "Did you ever think what a woman owes to the man she marries?"
"I never thought about it," said Dolly. "What a man asks for, is that she will marry him." How Dolly's cheeks flamed up. But she was very serious, and the housekeeper if possible yet more so.
"Miss Dolly, she owes him the best love of her heart, after that she gives to God."
"I don't see how she can," said Dolly. "I do not see how she can love him so well as her father and mother."
"He expects it, though, and has a right to it. And unless a woman can give it, she cannot be a true wife. She makes a false vow at the altar. And unless she do love him so, it may easily happen that she will find somebody afterwards that she will like better than her husband. And then, all is lost."
"After she is married?" said Dolly.
"Perhaps after she has been married for years. If she has not married the right man, she may find him when she cannot marry him."
"But that is dreadful!" cried Dolly.