 I have suffered this day until I want to lay my face down against the hem of his garment and wait in the dust for him to pick me up. I shall never be able to do it myself and how he is going to do it I can't see, but he will. That dinner party last night was bad enough, but today's been worse. I didn't sleep until long after daylight and then Jane came in before eight o'clock with a letter for me that looked like a state document. I felt in my trembling bones that it was some sort of summons affair from Judge Wade and it was. I looked into the first paragraph and then decided that I had better get up and dress and have a cup of coffee and a single egg before I tried to read it. Incidental to my bath and dressing I weighed and found that I had lost all four of those last surplus pounds and two more in three days. Those two extra pounds might be construed to prove that I was in love, but exactly with whom I was utterly unprepared to say. I didn't even enjoy the thinness, but took a kind of already married look in my glass and tried to slip the egg past my bored lips and get myself to chew it down. It was work and then I took up the Judge's letter, which also was work and more of it. He started at the beginning of everything, that is at the beginning of the tuberculosis girl and I cried over the pages of her as if she had been my own sister. At the tenth page we buried her and took up Alfred and I must say I saw a new Alfred in the Judge's bouquet strewn appreciation of him, but I didn't want him as bad as I had the day before when I read his own new and old letters and cried over his old photographs. I suppose that was the result of some of what the Judge manages the juries with. He be apt to use it on a woman and she wouldn't find out about it until it was too late to be anything but mad. Still, when he began on me at page sixteen, I felt a little better, although I didn't know myself any better than I did Alfred when I got to page twenty. What I am is just a poor, foolish woman who has a lot more heart than she can manage with the amount of brains she got with it at birth. I'm not any star in a rose-colored sky and I don't want to inspire anybody. It's too heavy an undertaking. I want to be a healthy, happy woman and a wife to a man who can inspire himself and manage me. I want to marry a thin man and when I get to be thirty I want my husband to want me to be as large as Aunt Betty, but not let me. An inspiration couldn't be fat and I'm always in danger from hotcakes and chicken gravy. However, if I should undertake to be all the things Judge Wade said in that letter he wanted me to be to him, I should soon be skin and bones from mental and physical exercise. Still, he does live in Hillsborough and I won't let myself know how my heart aches at the thought of leaving my home and other things. It's up in my throat and I seem always to be swallowing it the last few days. All the men who write me letters seem to get themselves wound up into a sky rocket and then let themselves explode in the last paragraph and it always upsets my nerves. I was just about to begin to cry again over the last words of the judge when the only bright spot in the day so far suddenly happened. Pat Vuford ran in with the pinkest cheeks and the brightest eyes I had seen since I looked in the mirror the night of the dance. She was in an awful hurry. Mollie, dear, she said with her words literally falling over themselves. Tom says you would give us some of your dinner leftovers to take for lunch in the car, for we are going to take a run down to Hedgeland to see some awfully fine cattle he has heard will be in the market there. I don't want to ask mother in case you won't let me go and his mother, if he asked her, will begin to talk about us. Tom said I was to come to you and you would understand and arrange it all quickly. He sent his love in all sorts of other messages. Isn't he fond of a joke? And we kissed and laughed and packed a basket and kissed and laughed again for goodbye. I felt amused and happy for a few minutes and also deserted. It's a very good thing for a woman's conceit to find out how many of her lovers are just make-believes. I may have needed Tom's deflection. Anyway, I don't know when I was ever so glad to see anybody as I was when Mrs. Johnson came in the front door. A woman who has proved to her own satisfaction that marriage is a failure is at times a great tonic to other women. I needed a tonic badly this morning and I got it. Well, from all my long experience, Mollie, she said as she seated herself and began to hem a teak lot with long, steady stabs. Husbands are just like the stick of candy in different jars. They may look a little different, but they all taste alike and you soon get tired of them. In two months, you won't know the difference in being married to Alfred Bennett and Mr. Carter. And you'll have to go on living with him maybe 50 years. Luck doesn't strike twice in the same place and you can't count on losing two husbands. Alfred's father was Mr. Johnson's first cousin and had more crotchets and worse. He had silent spells that lasted a week and altogether gave his family a bad time of it. Alfred looks very much like him. Mrs. Johnson, I said after a minute's silence while I had decided whether or not I had better tell her all about it. If a woman's in love with her husband you can't trust her to keep a secret. But I decided to try Mrs. Johnson. I really am not engaged exactly to Alfred Bennett. Though I suppose he thinks so by now if he has got the answer to that telegram, but something has made me think about Judge Wayne. That is, what do you think of him, Mrs. Johnson? I concluded in the most pitifully perplexed tone of voice. All alike, Molly. All as much as peas in a pod. All except John Moore, who's the only exception in all the male tribe I ever met. His marrying once was just accidental and must be forgiven him. She fell in love with him while he was attending her when she had typhoid, when his back was turned as it were, and it was simple kindness in him that made him marry her when he found out how it was with the poor thing. There's not a woman in this town who could marry that wouldn't marry him at the drop of his hat. But thank goodness that hat will never drop, and I'll have one sensible man to comfort and doctor me down in my old age. Now just look at that. Mr. Johnson's come home here in the middle of the morning, and I'll have to get that old paper I hunted out of his desk for him last night. I wonder how he came to forget it. It's funny how Mrs. Johnson always knows what Mr. Johnson wants before he knows himself and gets it before he asks for it. As she went out of the gate, the postman came in, and at the sight of another letter, my heart slunk off into my slippers, and my brain seemed about to back up in a corner and refused to work. In a flash, it came to me that men oughtn't to write letters to women very much. They really don't plow deep enough. They just irritate the topsoil. I took this missive from Alfred, counted all the 15 pages, put it out of sight under a book, looked out of the window, and saw Mr. Johnson shoot off down the street by Mrs. Johnson. Saw the doctor's car go chugging hurriedly in the garage, and then my spirit turned itself to the wall and refused to be comforted. I tried my best, but failed to respond to my own remonstrances with myself, and tears were slowly gathering in a cloud of gloom, when a blue gingham romper-clad sunbeam burst into the room. Get your nightgown in your toothbrush quick, Molly, if you want to pack him in my trunk. He exclaimed, with his eyes dancing and a curl standing straight up on top of his head, as it has a habit of doing when he is most excited. You can't take nothing but them, because I'm going to put in a rope to tie the whale with when I catch him, and it'll take up all the rest of the room. Get him quick. Yes, lover, I'll get them for you. But tell Molly where it is you are going to sail off with her in that trunk of hers. I asked, dropping into the game as I had always done with him, no matter what game of my own pressed when he called. On the ocean, where the boats go cross and run right over a whale, don't you remember you showed me them pictures of spout whales in a book, Molly? Father says they come right up by the ship, and you can hear him shoot water, and maybe an iceberg, too. Which do you want to catch most, Molly, an iceberg or a whale? His eager eyes demanded instant decision on my part of the nature of capture I preferred. My mind quickly reverted to those two ponderous and intense epistles I had got within the hour, and I lay back in my chair and laughed until I felt almost merry. The iceberg, Billy, every time I said it last. I just can't manage whales, especially if they are ardent, which word means intense. I like icebergs, or think I should if I could catch one. I don't believe you could, Molly, but maybe Father will let you put a rope and a long hook in his trunk to try with if your clothes go into mine. His is the heap the biggest anyway, and Nurse Tilly said he ought to put my things in his, but I cried, and then he went upstairs and got out that little one for me. Come and see him. What do you mean, Billy? I asked, while a sudden fear shot all over me like lightning. You're just playing going away, aren't you? No, I'm not playing, Molly, he exclaimed excitedly. Me and you and Father is going across the ocean for a long, long time away from here. Father asked me about it this morning, and I told him all right, and you could come with us if you was good. He said couldn't I go without you if you was busy and couldn't come, and I told him you would put things down and come if I said so. Won't you, Molly? It won't be no fun without you, and you'd cry all by yourself with me gone. His little face was all drawn up with anxiety and sympathy at my lonely estate with him out of it, and a cry rose up from my heart with a kind of primitive savagery at what I felt was coming down upon me. Without waiting to take him with me, or think, or do anything but feel deadly savage anger, I hurried across the garden and into Dr. Moore's surgery, for he was just taking off his gloves and dustcoat. What do you mean, John Moore, by daring, daring to think, you can go and take Billy away from me, I demanded, looking at him with what must have been such fear and madness in my face that he was startled as he came close to the table against which I leaned. His face had grown white and quiet at my attack, and he waited to answer for a long, horrible minute that pulled me apart like one of those inquisition machines they used to torture women with when they didn't know any better modern way to do it. I didn't know Bill would tell you so soon, Mrs. Molly, he said at last gently, looking past me out of the window into the garden. I was coming over just as soon as I got back from this call to talk with you about it, even if it did seem to intrude Bill's and my affairs into a day that ought to be all yours to be happy in. But Bill, you see, is no respecter of other people's happy days if he wants them in his. Billy's happy days are mine, and mine are his, and he has the heart not to leave me out even if you would have him, I exclaimed, a sob gathering in my heart at the thought that my little lover hadn't even taken in a situation that would separate him from me across an ocean. Bill is too young to understand when he is being bereaved, Molly, he said, and still he didn't look at me. I have been appointed a delegate to attend the Centennial Congress in Paris the middle of next month, and somehow I feel a bit run down lately, and I thought I would take the little chap and have a Wunderjar. You won't need him now, Mrs. Molly, and I couldn't go without him, could I? The sadness in his voice would have killed me if I hadn't let it madden me instead. Won't need Billy anymore, I exclaimed, with a rage that made my voice literally scorch past my lips. Was there ever a minute in his life that I haven't needed Billy? How dare you say such a thing to me? You are cruel, cruel, and I have always known it, cold and cruel like all other men who don't care how they wring the lifeblood out of women's hearts and are willing to use their children to do it with. Even the law doesn't help us poor helpless creatures, and you can take our children and go with them to the ends of the earth and leave us suffering. I've gone on and believed that you were not like what the women say all men are, and that you cared whether you hurt people or not, but now I see that you are just the same, and you'll take my baby away if you want to, and I can do nothing to prevent it, nothing in the wide world. I'm completely and absolutely helpless. You coward, you. When that awful word, the worst word that a woman can use to a man left my lips, a flame shot up into his eyes that I thought would burn me up, but in a half-second it was extinguished by the strangest thing in the world for the situation, a perfect flood of mirth. He sat down in his chair and shook all over with his head in his hands until I saw the tears creep through his fingers. I had calmed down now so suddenly that I was about to begin to cry in good earnest when he wiped his eyes and said with a low laugh in his throat. The case is yours, Molly, settled out of court, and the possession nine points of the law clause works in some cases for a woman against a man. Generally speaking, anyway, the pup belongs to the man who can whistle him down, and you can whistle Bill from me any day. I'm just his father, and what I think or want doesn't matter. You have better take him and keep him. I intend to, I answered haughtily, uncertain as to whether I have better give in and be agreeable or stay prepared to cry in case there was further argument. But suddenly a strange diffidence came into his eyes and he looked away from me as he said in queer, hesitating words. You see, Mrs. Molly, I thought from now on, your life wouldn't exactly have a place for Bill. Have you considered that you have trained him to demand you all the time and all of you? How would you manage Bill and other claims? And if there is a contagious thing in the world, it is embarrassment. I never felt anything worse in all my life than the shame that swept over me in a great hot wave when that look came into his eyes and made me realize just exactly what I had been saying to him about what and how I had said it. I stood perfectly still, shook all over like a leaf, and wondered if I would ever be able to raise my eyes from the ground. A dizzy, nauseated feeling for myself rose up in me against myself and I was just about to turn on my heels and leave him. I hoped forever when he came over and laid his hand on my shoulder. Molly, he said in a voice that might have come down from heaven on dove's wings. You can't for a moment think or feel that I don't realize and appreciate what you have been to the motherless little chap. And for life I am yours at command as he is. I really thought it would be a relief to you to have him taken away from you for a little while just now and I still think it is best, but not unless you consent. You shall have him back whenever you are ready for him and at all times both he and I are at your service to the whole of our kingdoms. Just think the matter over, won't you, and decide what you want me to do. Something in me died forever, I think, when he spoke to me like that. He's not like other men and there aren't any other men on earth but him. All the rest are just nowhere and I'm not anything myself. There's no excuse for my living and I wish I wasn't so healthy and likely to go on doing it. It was all over and there was nothing left for me to live for and before I could stop myself I buried my face in my hands. Billy asked me to go with him on this awful whale hunt. I sobbed out to comfort myself with the thought that somebody did care for me regardless of just how I was further embarrassing and complicating myself in the affairs of the two men I thought I owned and was now finding out that I had to give up. I wish I had been looking at him for I felt him start but he said in his big friendly voice that it's so much and never enough for me. Well, why not you and Alfred come along and make a family party if that's what suits Bill, the boss? If men would just make an end of women's hearts in a business-like way, it would be so much kinder of them. Why do they prefer to use dull weapons that mash the life out slowly? Everything is at an end for me tonight and that blow did it. It was a horrible, cruel thing for him to say to me. I know now that I have been in love with John Moore for longer than I can tell and that I'll never love anybody else and that also I have offered myself to him and have had to be refused at least twice a day for a year. A widow can't say she didn't understand what she was doing even to herself, but my humiliation is complete and the only thing that can make me ever hold up my head is to puzzle him by happily marrying Alfred Bennett and quick. Of course, he must suspect how I feel about him for two people couldn't both be so ignorant as not to see such an enormous thing as my love for him is and I was the blind one but he must never, never know that I ever realized it for he is so good that it would distress him. I must go on in my foolish way with him until I can get away. I'll tell him I'm sorry I was so indignant tonight and say that it will be fine for him to take my Billy away from me with him. I must smile at the idea of having my very soul amputated, insist that it was the only thing to do and pack up the little soul in a cabin trunk with a smile. Just smile, that is all. Life demands smiles from a woman even if she must crush their perfume from her own heart and she generally has them ready. Oh Molly, Molly, is it for this you came into the world twice to give yourself without love? What difference does it make that your arms are strong and white if they can't clasp him? Why are your eyes blue pools of love if they are not for his questioning? Yes, I know God is very tender with a woman and I think he understands. So if she crept very close to him and caught at his sleeve to steady herself, he would be kind to her until she had the courage to go on her own steep way. Please God, let him never find out for it would hurt him to have hurt me. End of leaf seven, recorded by Marianne Spiegel, July 18th, 2009. Leaf eight of the melting of Molly. This is a LibriFox recording or LibriFox recordings are under public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriFox.org. Recording by Shilifa Malachem. The melting of Molly by Mariah Thumpson Davis. Leaf eight, melted. Some days are like the miracle flowers that open in the garden from plants you didn't expect to bloom at all. I might have been born, lived and died without having this one come into my life and now that I have had it, I don't know how to write it, except in the crimson of blood, the blue of flame, the gold of glory and a tint of light green would well express the part I have played. But it is all over at last. And Rose Clinton was the unfolding of the first hour petal. And I got a glimpse of a heart of gold that I feel dumb with worship to think of. She's God's own good woman and he made her what she is. I wish I could have born her or she me and the tenderness of her arms was a sacrament. We two women just stood aside with lies, artifices and concealments and let our own hearts do the talking. She said, she had come because she felt that if she talked with me, I might be better able to understand Alfred when he came and that she had seen that the judge was very determined and she thoroughly recognized his fault of character. We stopped there while I gave her the document to read. I suppose it was dishonorable, but I needed a protection from it. I'm glad she had the strength of mind to walk with her head high in the air to the fire and burn it up. Anything might have happened if she hadn't. And even now I feel that only my marriage vows will close up the case for the judge, even yet he may. But when Ruth had got on with Alfred, she had wiped judge Wade's appreciation of him completely off my mind and destroyed it in tender words that burned as both worse than Jane's fire burnt to the letter. She did mean awfully good service. And so you see, you lovely woman, you do not that you were for him as a tribute to his greatness and as it's given to you to fulfill a destiny. She was so beautiful, as she said it, that I had to turn my eyes away. But I felt as I did when the solemn, let not man put a sonder word so spoken over me by Mr. Raines, our minister. It made me frightened, and before I knew it, I had poured out the whole truth to her in a perfect cataract of words. The truth always acts on women as some hizito and dry drug, and you can never tell what reaction is going to be. In this case, I was stricken dump and found it hard to see. Oh, dear heart! She exclaimed as she reached out and drew me into her lovely gracious arms. Then the privilege is all the more wonderful for you as you make some sacrifice to complete his life. Having suffered this, you will be all the greater woman to understand him. I accept my own sorry at his hands willingly, as it gives me the largest sympathy for his work, though he will no longer need my personal encouragement as he has for years. In the light of his love, this lesser feeling for Dr. Moore will soon pass away and the accord between you will be complete. And this was more than I could stand. And feeling less than a worm, I turned my face into her breast and wailed. Now, who would have thought that girl could dance as she did? By this time, I was in such a solution of grief that I would soon have had to be soft up with a sponge if Pat hadn't run in all bubbling over. Happiness has a habit of not even acknowledging the presence of grief, and Pat didn't seem to see our red noses, crushed draperies and generally damp atmosphere. Molly, she said, was a deliciously young giggle. Tom says, you ought to send him two guineas who spent getting the brass vent to polish up before the six o'clock train, by which your Mr. Bennett comes. He has spent a guinea ready to induce them to clean up the uniforms, and it cost him five pounds to build the cornetist out of gall for roost-dropping. He says, I'm to tell you that, as this is your festivity, you ought at least to pay the piper. Hurry up, he's waiting for me. And here's the kiss he told me to put on your left ear. I suppose you delivered that kiss straight from where he'd given to you, petty dear. I have the spray to say, as I went over to the desk for my purse. Why, Molly, you know me better than that. She exclaimed from behind a perfect rose cloud of blushes. I know Tom better than I do you. I answered, as she fled with the money in her hand. I looked at Ruth Clinton, and he both laughed. It is true that the broader sympathy is one of the by-products of sorrow, and a week ago I might have presented Pett to a marked agree instead of giving her the money and a blessing. I'm going quick, Molly, with that laugh between us. Ruth said, as she rose and took me into her arms again for just half a second, and before I could stop her, she was gone. She met Billy toiling up the front step with a long piece of rusty iron gas pipe, which took off an inch of paint as it bumped against the doorway. She bent down and kissed the back of his neck, which, theft, was almost more than I could stand, and apparently more than Billy was prepared to accept. Go away, girl, he said in his rudest manner. Don't you see I'm busy? I met him in the front hall, just in time to prevent a hopeless car on my pocket floor. He was hot, perspiring and pounding, but full of triumph. I found it, Molly, I found it! He exclaimed as he let the heavy pound drop almost on the bare-pink toes. You can get a hammer and pound the end sharp, and bandits in no will we catch can get away from nothing. Your father can put it in your trunk, because it's too long for mine, and I can carry father's shirts and things in mine. Get a hammer quick, and I'll help you do it. The pain in my breast was almost more than I could bear. Lover, I said as I knelt down by him in the dim old hall, and put my arms around him, as if to shield him from some blow I couldn't help being aimed at him. You wouldn't mind much, would you? If just this time your Molly couldn't go with you? Your father is going to take good care of you, and maybe bring you back to me some day. Why, Molly, he said, flaring his astonished blue eyes at me. It isn't me to be too care of. I'm not going to leave you here for maybe a beer to come out of a circus and eat you up with me and father gone. Sides, father isn't very useful, and maybe wouldn't help me hold the rope rye to keep the whale from getting away. He don't know how to do like I tell him, like you do. Try him, Lover, and maybe he will have learned to. I couldn't help the tears that came to stop my words. Now, you see, Molly, how you'd cry with that kissbot gone. He said, with an amused, manly little tenderness in his voice, that I had never heard before, and he cuddled his lips against mine in almost the only voluntary kiss he had given me since I got him into his ridiculous little trousers and his blouses. You can give most a hundred kisses every night if you don't say no more about not going and to make that whale hook for me quick, the coaxed against my cheek. Oh, little Lover, little Lover, you didn't know what you were saying with your baby wisdom, and your rust, crimey little hand burned the sleep plays on my breast, like a terrible white heat from which I was powerless to defend myself. You're mine, you are, you are. You are soul of my soul and heart of my heart and spirit of my spirit. I don't know how I managed to answer Mrs. Johnson's call from my front gate, but I sometimes think that women have a torture-proof clause in their constitutions. She and Aunt Betty had just come up the street from Aunt Betty's house, and the pallet cook was following them with a large basket in which were packed things Aunt Betty was contributing towards the entertainment of the distinguished citizen. Mrs. Johnson is outfits nearest Kinsman, Helsborough, and of course, he is to be their guest while he is in town. He'll be feeling his eyes on Molly, so he'll not even know he's eating my Kensington Almond pudding with Somerset's old port in it. He's down to Betty with a laugh as I run across the street with him. There's going to be a regular epidemic of love affairs in Helsborough, I do believe. She continued in her usual strain of sentimental speculation. I saw Mr. Grace talking to Deliah Hawes in front of the drapers an hour ago, as I came out from looking at the blue shins to match pad for the West Wing, and they were both so absorbed they didn't even see me. That was what might have been called a convocation dinner you gave the other night, Molly, in more ways than one. I wish a spark had set off phantom weight in Henrietta, too. Maybe you did, but it is just taking the fire slowly. I think it would be a good thing just to let Aunt Betty blindfold every unmarried person in this town and marry them to the first person they touch hands with. It would be fun for her, and then we could have peace, and apparently as much happiness as we are going to have anyway. Mrs. Johnson seemed to be in somewhat the same state of mind as I found myself. Oh, she said as we went up the front steps. I'll be glad when you are married and settled, Molly Carter, so the rest of this town can quiet down and to peace once more. And I sincerely hope every woman under 50 in Hillsborough who is already married will stay in that state until she reaches that age. But come on in, both of you, and help me get this marriage feast ready if I must. The day is going by on greased wheels, and I can't let Mr. Johnson Crutch has been neglected. Alfred or no, Alfred. And from then on, for hours and hours, I was strapped to a torture wheel that turned and turned minute after minute as it crowned spines and sugar and bridal meat sent me relentlessly into a great suffering pulp. Could I have in all my life have hungered for food and been able to get it past the lumber in my throat that grew larger with the seconds? And if Alfred's pudding tasted of the sort of dead sea fruit this evening, it was from my surctitious tears that ripped into it. It was late, very late, before Mrs. Johnson realized it, and shewed me home to get ready to go to the train along with the brass band and all the other welcomes. I hurried all I could, but for long minutes I stood in front of my mirror and questioned myself. Could this slow, pale, dead-eyed, slim, drooping girl, be the rollicking girl of a molly who had looked out of that mirror at me one short week ago? Where were the wings on her heels? The glint in her curls, the laugh on her mouth and the light in her eyes. Slowly at last, I lifted the blue muslin, 23-inch waist shroud and let it slip over my head and fall slimly around me. I was fastening the buttons behind and was fumbling the next one into the buttonhole when I suddenly heard laughing, excited voices coming up the side street that ran just under my west window. Something told me that Alfred had come by the five-down train instead of the six-up, and I fairly reeled to the window and peeped through the Venetian blind. They were all in a laughing group around him, with Tom as master of ceremonies, and Ruth Clinton was looking up into his face with an expression, I am glad I can never forget. It killed all my regrets on the score of his future. It took two good looks to take him all in, and then I must have missed some of him. For all in all, he was so large that he stretched your eyes to behold him. He's grown seven feet tall. I don't know how many pounds he weighs, and I don't want anybody ever to tell me. I had never thought enough about evolution to know whether I believed in it and woman's suffrage. But I know now that millions of years ago a great big distinguished hippopotamus stepped out of the woods and frightened one of my foremothers so that she turned and fled through a sicket. There's almost tore her limb from limb right into the arms of her own maid. That's what I did. I caught that blue-setten belt and hooked it together with one hand and ran through my garden right over a bed of savage tiger lilies and flung myself into John Moore's surgery and slammed the door and backed up against it. He's come, I gasped, and I'm right into death but there's nobody but you to run to. Hide me quick! He's large and cause-looking and I hate him. I was of that deadly court you can get when fear runs into your very marrow and congeals to blotting your arteries. Quick! Quick! I panted. He must have been as pale as I was, and for an eternity of a second he looked at me. Then suddenly, John shunned from his eyes and he opened his arms to me with just one word. Here. I went. He hauled me gently for half a second and then with his sock which I felt rather than heard he crushed me to him and stopped my breath with his lips on mine. I understood things then that I never had before and I felt I was safe at last. I raised my hand and breasted against John's wet lashes until he could let me speak and I was melted into his very breast itself. Molly, he said when enough tenderness had come back into his arms to let me breathe you have almost killed me. You! I exclaimed crowding still closer or at least trying to. It's not you. It's I that I'm killed and you did it. I know you don't really want me but I can't help that I'd rather you do the suffering with me than to do it myself away from you. I'm so hungry and thirsty for you, that I can't die any longer. I put the case the strongest way I knew how. Won't you, Molly? He almost sobbed and I felt his heart pounding hard next to my shoulder. Yes, want me? I answered with more spirit and breath left in me. I refused to believe you are as stupid as I am and anybody with even an ordinary amount of brains must have seen how hard I was fighting for you. I feel sure I left no stone unturned. Some of them I can already think back and I see myself tugging at and it makes me hot all over. I'm foolish, I'd always was so I'm to be excused for acting that all for way but you are to blame for letting me do it. I'm going to be your punishment for life for not having been stern and stopped me. You had better stop me for if I go on loving you as I have been for the last few minutes it will make you uncomfortable. Blossom, he said after he had touched me with another broken dose of love as large as he thought I could stand I could have stood more I am never going to tell you how long I have loved you but that day you came to me all in a flutter with spanner's letter in your hand it is going to take you a lifetime to settle for you were mine and bills how could you? but women don't understand I felt him shudder in my arms as I held him close don't women know John? I managed to ask softly memory of a lie question he had put to me across that Breton jam with a rose a listening from the dark what brought me to consciousness was his fumbling with a lace on that blue muslin relict of a sentiment the lace had got caught on his sleeve buttons please don't forget that that is his possession I laughed under his gin I'm still scared to death of him and you haven't hit me yet Molly, he asked and this time was a heaven love where could you be more effectually hit from Alfred Bennett than in my arms I spent ten minutes telling Billy what a hippopotamus really looks like and I put him to bed but later, much as I should have liked to I couldn't consume that horrible dinner that I had helped prepare Reddy Johnson's in the shelter of John's arms and I had to face Alfred Ruth Clinton was there and she faced him too a man that can't be happy with a woman who is willing to fulfill his destiny doesn't deserve to be then we came over here and John had the most beautiful time persuading Aunt Adeline how a good man like Mr. Carter would want his young widow to be taken care of by being married to a safe friend of his instead of being flighty and having forks wondering whom she would marry you know yourself how hard a time a beautiful young widow has Mrs. Henderson he set him the tone of voice that always makes his patients glad to take his worst doses he got his blessing and me was a warning a lovely night wind is blowing across my garden and bringing me congratulations from all my flower family flowers are a part of love and the ruin of it and they understand I am waiting for the lights to go out behind the tall trees over which the moon is starsily sinking he promised me to put it out at once and I'm watching the glow that marks a place where my own two men creatures are going to rest with my heart in full song he needs rest he's so very tired and warm he confessed it as I stood on the step above him tonight after he had taken his own good night from me out under the oak tree when he explained to me how his agony over me for all these months had kept him walking the floor night after night not knowing that I was waiting for the light to go out I gave myself a sweetness that I am going to say prayer for the last thing before I sleep I took his head and my arms and put my lips to that drake-tailed kiss-bot that has tempted me for I won't say how long then I fled and so did he I had about decided to burn this book because I shan't need it any longer for he says he and Billy and I are going to play so much golf and tennis that I shall keep as thin as he wants me to without any more melting or freezing or starving but perhaps he would like to read the little red book End of Leaf Eight End of The Melting of Molly by Mariah Somsen Davis