ior
considerations in her breathless anxiety to hear his next words. The
confession of his love was within a hair-breadth of escaping him; but
he checked the utterance of it even yet. "I don't care for myself," he
thought; "but how can I be certain of not distressing _her?_"

"Would you have said Yes?" she repeated.

"I was doubting," he answered--"I was doubting between Yes and No."

Her hand tightened on his arm; a sudden trembling seized her in every
limb, she could bear it no longer. All her heart went out to him in her
next words:

"Were you doubting _for my sake?"_

"Yes," he said. "Take my confession in return for yours--I was doubting
for your sake."

She said no more; she only looked at him. In that look the truth reached
him at last. The next instant she was folded in his arms, and was
shedding delicious tears of joy, with her face hidden on his bosom.

"Do I deserve my happiness?" she murmured, asking the one question at
last. "Oh, I know how the poor narrow people who have never felt and
never suffered would answer me if I asked them what I ask you. If _they_
knew my story, they would forget all the provocation, and only remember
the offense; they would fasten on my sin, and pass all my suffering
by. But you are not one of them! Tell me if you have any shadow of a
misgiving! Tell me if you doubt that the one dear object of all my life
to come is to live worthy of you! I asked you to wait and see me; I
asked you, if there was any hard truth to be told, to tell it me here
with your own lips. Tell it, my love, my husband!--tell it me now!"

She looked up, still clinging to him as she clung to the hope of her
better life to come.

"Tell me the truth!" she repeated.

"With my own lips?"

"Yes!" she answered, eagerly. "Say what you think of me with your own
lips."

He stooped and kissed her.

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