"I have a right to give
up my own happiness. I do not see the wrong of it."

"In anything else," said the housekeeper. "In anything else, my dear;
only not in marriage! My dear, it is not simply giving up one's
happiness; it is a long torture! No, you owe it to yourself; for in
that way you could never grow to be what you might be. My dear, I have
seen it tried. I have known a woman who married so, thinking that it
would not matter so much; she fulfilled life's duties nobly, she was a
good wife and mother and friend; but when I asked her once, after she
had told me her story, how life had been to her?--I shall never forget
how she turned to me and said, 'It has been a hell upon earth!' Miss
Dolly, no good father and mother would buy _anything_ at such a price;
and no man that really loved a woman would have her at such a price;
and so, if you follow the rule, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do
to you, do ye even so to them'--you will never marry in that way."

There was a little silence, and then Dolly said in an entirely changed
tone, "You have cleared up the mist, Mrs. Jersey."

"Then there is another thing," the housekeeper went on. She heard the
change in Dolly's voice, out of which the anxiety had suddenly
vanished, but she was willing to make assurance doubly sure. "Did you
ever think what a woman owes to the man she marries?"

"I never thought about it," said Dolly. "What a man asks for, is that
she will marry him." How Dolly's cheeks flamed up. But she was very
serious, and the housekeeper if possible yet more so.

"Miss Dolly, she owes him the best love of her heart, after that she
gives to God."

"I don't see how she can," said Dolly. "I do not see how she _can_ love
him so well as her father and mother."

"He expects it, though, and has a right to it. And unless a woman can
give it, she cannot be a true wife. She makes a false vow at the altar.
And unless she do love him so, it may easily happen that she will find
somebody afterwards that she will like better than her husband. And
then, all is lost."

"After she is married?" said Dolly.

"Perhaps after she has been married for years. If she has not married
the right man, she may find him when she cannot marry him."

"But that is dreadful!" cried Dolly.

"The world is a pretty mixed-up place," said the housekeeper. "I want
_your_ way to be straight and clear, Miss Dolly."

There was a pause again, at the end of which Dolly repeated, "Thank