Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/139

Rh but he said to himself: "If I feel that I can make her happy, I believe she is the woman I ought to marry. I 've loved her ever since I can remember anything, and that ought to be the best sort of love."

And as the summer grew fair this feeling grew strong, and John and Molly grew happier and happier, until one October day when everything except grapes had ripened, this too ripened and fell, and Molly gathered it. When John said to her:—

"Molly, do you think you could love me well enough to have me for your husband?" she looked up into his face and said only:— "Oh, John, do you think I should make you happy?" And in that instant something in the look on Molly's face, and in the tone of Molly's voice, smote the inmost citadel of John's heart which had never before opened, and never would have opened to any other or different touch.

There is an evil fashion of speech and of theory, that a man's love for a woman lasts better, is stronger, if he be never wholly assured of hers for him. This is a base and shallow theory; an outrage on true manliness; it has grown out of the pitiful lack of true manliness in some men; out of the pitiful abundance of selfish counterfeit loves and loving. Nothing under heaven can so touch, so hold, so make eternally sure, the tenderness, the loyalty, the passion of a manly man, as the consciousness in every hour, in every act of life, that