“I have made up my mind to give up everything to our love. I will free all my niggers--for the sake of your dear conscience not one shall be sold--and see that they find places where they can earn their livings. Then I will sell my property and we will put this country and its accursed contentions behind us. We will go to England, dear heart, or France, and live where there will come hardly an echo of all this strife to disturb our blessed content and happiness!” She dropped her eyes from his and for a long moment stood motionless while it seemed to her that her very heart stood still. With swift inner vision, like that of a drowning man, she saw those years of wedded life, long years of comradeship and love and deepest joy, with dear children growing up beside them, and her heart yearned toward its peace and happiness with such urgency that she dared not try to speak. “Think, Rhoda, dear,” he was pleading, “think of the quiet, blissful years that are waiting for us! Our two hearts together, and nothing, nothing at all to come between them!” Her very lips were pale with desire of it as she whispered: “I am thinking, and, oh, Jeff, the thought of it, the joy of it, almost makes my heart stop beating. But have you thought, dear, dear Jeff, what a sacrifice this will be for you? I know how much you love the South. Would you never regret it, never wish to come back and throw yourself into her service? If that should happen, it would be the end of happiness for us both, for I should know it--our hearts would be so close together--even if you didn’t say a word. Have you thought of that, dear Jeff?” He smiled at her with loving confidence. “I’ve thought that all out, dear heart. For weeks I’ve been thinking of it, and threshing it all out in my mind, until I feel quite sure of myself. I do love my dear Southland and as you know so well my ambition has always been to spend my life in her service. But there are plenty of other men who can do her work as well as I can, and not at the cost of their heart’s love and life’s happiness. I am willing to let them do it while I take my love and my happiness. My sweet! I knew your dear, generous heart would ask me that!” He bowed over her hand, which he still held in his, and pressed it to his lips. Her heart was pleading: “He is right. There are plenty of others who can do his work, and there are surely many, many who can do what little is possible for me better than I. Why not put it all aside and take the love and happiness that belong to us?” And then, like an icy grip upon her softening, yielding heart came remembrance of the Thing that was about to happen in the Virginia mountains.