"Forgive me! Take all I have--fortune, name, and my poor self; use us as
you will, we are proud and happy to be spent for you! No service will be
too hard, no trial too long if in the end you learn to love me with one
tithe of the affection I have made my life. Do you mean it? Am I to go
with you? To be near you always, to call you wife, and know we are each
other's until death? What have I ever done to earn a fate like this?"
Fast and fervently he spoke, and very winsome was the glad abandonment
of this young lover, half boy, half man, possessing the simplicity of
the one, the fervor of the other. Pauline looked and listened with a
soothing sense of consolation in the knowledge that this loyal heart was
all her own, a sweet foretaste of the devotion which henceforth was to
shelter her from poverty, neglect, and wrong, and turn life's sunniest
side to one who had so long seen only its most bleak and barren. Still
at her feet, his arms about her waist, his face flushed and proud,
lifted to hers, Manuel saw the cold mask soften, the stern eyes melt
with a sudden dew as Pauline watched him, saying, "Dear Manuel, love me
less; I am not worth such ardent and entire faith. Pause and reflect
before you take this step. I will not bind you to my fate too soon lest
you repent too late. We both stand alone in the world, free to make or
mar our future as we will.
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