Faith wondered if it were right that she shouldn't quite care to be "had all the time to himself until then"? Whether such demonstrativeness and exclusiveness of affection was ever a little irksome to others as to her?
Faith thought and questioned, often, what other girls might feel in positions like her own, and tried to judge herself by them; it absolutely never occurred to her to think how it might have been if another than Paul had stood in this relation toward herself.
The young man did not quite have his own way, however. His father went down to Mishaumok on one of the three days, and left him in charge at the mills; and there were people to see, and arrangements to make; but some part of each day he did manage to devote to Faith, and they had walking and driving together, and every night Paul stayed to tea at Cross Corners.
On the last evening, they sat together, by the hillside door, in the summer parlor.
"Faithie," said Paul, a little suddenly, "there is something you must do for me--do you know?"
"You must wear this, now, and keep the forget-me-not for a guard."
He held her hand, that wore the ring, in one of his, and there was a flash of diamonds as he brought the other toward it.
"I can't! I can't! Oh, Paul! don't ask me!" And her hand was drawn from the clasp of his, and her face was hidden in both her own.
"If I could only wait!" she murmured. "I don't dare, yet!"
She could wear the forget-me-not, as she wore the memory of all their long young friendship, it belonged to the past; but this definite pledge for the future--these diamonds!
"Do you not quite belong to me, even yet?" asked Paul, with a resentment, yet a loving and patient one, in his voice.
"I told you," said Faith, "that I would try--to be to you as you wish; but Paul! if I couldn't be so, truly?--I don't know why I feel so uncertain. Perhaps it is because you care for me too much. Your thought for me is so great, that mine, when I look at it, never seems worthy."
Paul was a man. He could not sue, too cringingly, even for Faith Gartney's love.
"And I told you, Faith, that I was satisfied to be allowed to love you. That you should love me a little, and let it grow to more. But if it is not love at all--if I frighten you, and repel you--I have no wish to make you unhappy. I must let you go. And yet--oh, Faith!" he cried--the sternness all gone, and only the wild love sweeping through his heart, and driving wild words before it--"it can't be that it is no love, after all! It would be too cruel!"