"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.
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