“I’d like to see you on your knees, if I might pick you up,” he said, “but, Molly, I can’t.  You’ve everything to lose and I’ve nothing on God’s earth to give you except myself.”

“But if that’s all I want?”

“It isn’t, darling.  You may think so, but it isn’t and you’d find it out.  You see all this time since I’ve lost you, I’ve been learning to give you up.  It’s a poor love that isn’t big enough to give up when the chance comes to it.”

“If—­if you give me up, I’ll let everything go,” she said passionately.  “I’ll not take a penny of that money.  I’ll stay at Old Church and live with Betsey Bottom and raise chickens.  If you give me up I’ll die, Abel,” she finished with a sob.

At the sound of her sob, he laughed softly, and his laugh, unlike his smile, was a laugh of happiness.

“If you go to live with Betsey Bottom I’ll come and get you,” he answered, “but Molly, Molly, how you’ve tortured me.  You deserve a worse punishment than raising chickens.”

“That will be happiness.”

“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.