I want you as my wife."

"I feel, Mr. Boldwood, that though I respect you much, I do not
feel--what would justify me to--in accepting your offer," she
stammered.

This giving back of dignity for dignity seemed to open the sluices of
feeling that Boldwood had as yet kept closed.

"My life is a burden without you," he exclaimed, in a low voice. "I
want you--I want you to let me say I love you again and again!"

Bathsheba answered nothing, and the horse upon her arm seemed so
impressed that instead of cropping the herbage she looked up.

"I think and hope you care enough for me to listen to what I have to
tell!"

Bathsheba's momentary impulse at hearing this was to ask why he
thought that, till she remembered that, far from being a conceited
assumption on Boldwood's part, it was but the natural conclusion of
serious reflection based on deceptive premises of her own offering.

"I wish I could say courteous flatteries to you," the farmer
continued in an easier tone, "and put my rugged feeling into a
graceful shape: but I have neither power nor patience to learn such
things. I want you for my wife--so wildly that no other feeling can
abide in me; but I should not have spoken out had I not been led to
hope."

"The valentine again! O that valentine!" she said to herself, but
not a word to him.

"If you can love me say so, Miss Everdene. If not--don't say no!"

"Mr. Boldwood, it is painful to have to say I am surprised, so that
I don't know how to answer you with propriety and respect--but am
only just able to speak out my feeling--I mean my meaning; that I am
afraid I can't marry you, much as I respect you. You are too
dignified for me to suit you, sir."

"But, Miss Everdene!"

"I--I didn't--I know I ought never to have dreamt of sending that
valentine--forgive me, sir--it was a wanton thing which no woman with
any self-respect should have done. If you will only pardon my
thoughtlessness, I promise never to--"

"No, no, no. Don't say thoughtlessness! Make me think it was
something more--that it was a sort of prophetic instinct--the
beginning of a feeling that you would like me. You torture me to say
it was done in thoughtlessness--I never thought of it in that light,
and I can't endure it. Ah! I wish I knew how to win you! but that I
can't do--I can only ask if I have already got you. If I have not,
and it is not true that you have come unwittingly to me as I have to
you, I can say no more."

"I