“Even though it be to give you up, you whom I love better than my life—for whom I would die so willingly. Oh, Anna!” and he sank on his knees beside her, and winding his arms around her waist, looked her imploringly in the face. “I sometimes fear that you have sickened of me—that you shrink from my caresses. If it is so, in mercy tell me now, before it is too late; for, Anna, dear as you are to me, I would rather to-morrow’s sunshine should fall upon your grave and mine, than take you to my bosom an unloving wife! I have worked for you, early and late, thinking only how you might be pleased. There is not a niche or corner in my home that is not hallowed by thoughts of you whom I have loved since you were a little child and I carried you in the arms which now would be your resting place forever. I know I am not your equal, I feel it painfully, but I can learn with you as my teacher, and, my precious Anna, whatever I may lack in polish, I _will_, I _will_ make up in kindness!” He was pleading now for her love, forgetting that she was his promised wife—forgetting everything, save that to his words of passionate appeal there came no answering response in the expression of her face. Only the same fixed, stony look, which almost maddened him; it was so unlike what he deserved and had reason to expect. “I shall be lonely without you, Anna—more lonely than you can guess, for there is no mother here now to bless and cheer me as she would have cheered me in my great sorrow. She loved you, Anna, and blessed you with her dying breath, saying she was glad, for your sake, that the chair where you sit would be empty when you came, and asking God to deal by you even as you dealt by me.” “Oh, Adam, Adam!” Anna gasped, for what had been meant for a blessing rang in her ears like that blind woman’s curse. “May God deal better by me than I meant to deal by you!” she tried to say, but the words died on her lips, and she could only lay her cold hands on the shoulder of him who still knelt before her, with his arms around her waist.