“Speak to me, Adolphus, and say that it shall be so.”

Then his heart misgave him, and he lacked the courage to extricate himself from his trouble; or, as he afterwards said to himself, he had not the heart to do it.  “If I understand you, rightly, Lily, all this comes from no want of love on your own part?”

“Want of love on my part?  But you should not ask me that.”

“Until you tell me that there is such a want, I will agree to no parting.”  Then he took her hand and put it within his arm.  “No, Lily; whatever may be our cares and troubles, we are bound together,—­indissolubly.”

“Are we?” said she; and as she spoke, her voice trembled, and her hand shook.

“Much too firmly for any such divorce as that.  No, Lily, I claim the right to tell you all my troubles; but I shall not let you go.”

“But, Adolphus—­” and the hand on his arm was beginning to cling to it again.

“Adolphus,” said he, “has got nothing more to say on that subject.  He exercises the right which he believes to be his own, and chooses to retain the prize which he has won.”

She was now clinging to him in very truth.  “Oh, my love!” she said.  “I do not know how to say it again.  It is of you that I am thinking;—­of you, of you!”

“I know you are; but you have misunderstood me a little; that’s all.”

“Have I?  Then listen to me again, once more, my heart’s own darling, my love, my husband, my lord!  If I cannot be to you at once like Ruth, and never cease from coming after you, my thoughts to you shall be like those of Ruth;—­if aught but death part thee and me, may God do so to me and more also.”  Then she fell upon his breast and wept.

He still hardly understood the depth of her character.  He was not himself deep enough to comprehend it all.  But yet he was awed by her great love, and exalted to a certain solemnity of feeling which for the time made him rejoice in his late decision.  For a few hours he was minded to throw the world behind him, and wear this woman, as such a woman should be worn,—­as a comforter to him in all things, and a strong shield against great troubles.  “Lily,” he said, “my own Lily!”

“Yes, your own, to take when you please, and leave untaken while you please; and as much your own in one way as in the other.”  Then she looked up again, and essayed to laugh as she did so.  “You will think I am frantic, but I am so happy.  I don’t care about your going now; indeed I don’t.  There; you may go now, this minute, if you like it.”  And she withdrew her hand from his.  “I feel so differently from what I have done for the last few days.  I am so glad you have spoken to me as you did.  Of course I ought to bear all those things with you.  But I cannot be unhappy about it now.  I wonder if I went to work and made a lot of things, whether that would help?”

“A set of shirts for me, for instance?”

“I could do that, at any rate.”