ers. You owe it
to me!"

"I feel that I do," said Bathsheba; "that is, if you demand it. But
I am a changed woman--an unhappy woman--and not--not--"

"You are still a very beautiful woman," said Boldwood. Honesty and
pure conviction suggested the remark, unaccompanied by any perception
that it might have been adopted by blunt flattery to soothe and win
her.

However, it had not much effect now, for she said, in a passionless
murmur which was in itself a proof of her words: "I have no feeling
in the matter at all. And I don't at all know what is right to do
in my difficult position, and I have nobody to advise me. But I
give my promise, if I must. I give it as the rendering of a debt,
conditionally, of course, on my being a widow."

"You'll marry me between five and six years hence?"

"Don't press me too hard. I'll marry nobody else."

"But surely you will name the time, or there's nothing in the promise
at all?"

"Oh, I don't know, pray let me go!" she said, her bosom beginning to
rise. "I am afraid what to do! I want to be just to you, and to be
that seems to be wronging myself, and perhaps it is breaking the
commandments. There is considerable doubt of his death, and then it
is dreadful; let me ask a solicitor, Mr. Boldwood, if I ought or no!"

"Say the words, dear one, and the subject shall be dismissed;
a blissful loving intimacy of six years, and then marriage--O
Bathsheba, say them!" he begged in a husky voice, unable to sustain
the forms of mere friendship any longer. "Promise yourself to me; I
deserve it, indeed I do, for I have loved you more than anybody in
the world! And if I said hasty words and showed uncalled-for heat
of manner towards you, believe me, dear, I did not mean to distress
you; I was in agony, Bathsheba, and I did not know what I said. You
wouldn't let a dog suffer what I have suffered, could you but know
it! Sometimes I shrink from your knowing what I have felt for you,
and sometimes I am distressed that all of it you never will know. Be
gracious, and give up a little to me, when I would give up my life
for you!"

The trimmings of her dress, as they quivered against the light,
showed how agitated she was, and at last she burst out crying. "And
you'll not--press me--about anything more--if I say in five or six
years?" she sobbed, when she had power to frame the words.

"Yes, then I'll leave it to time."

She waited a moment. "Very well. I'll marry you in six year