d neither been asked nor granted."

She still hesitated and faltered, till I began to fancy that her wish
must have a much graver import than I at first supposed. Perhaps to
treat the matter lightly and sportively would be the course most
likely to encourage her to explain it.

"What is it, child," I asked, "which you think the stranger of another
world more likely to grant than one of your own race, and which is so
extravagant, nevertheless, that you tremble to ask it even from me? Is
it too much to be bound not to appeal against me to the law, which
cannot yet determine whether I am a reality or a fiction? Or have I
proved my arm a little too substantial? Must the giant promise not to
exercise the masculine prerogative of physical force safely conceded
to the dwarf? Fie, Eveena! I am almost afraid to touch you, lest I
should hurt you unawares; lest tenderness itself should transgress the
limit of legal cruelty, and do grave bodily harm to a creature so much
more like a fairy than a woman!"

"No, no!" she expostulated, not at all reciprocating the jesting tone
in which I spoke. "If you would consent to give such a promise, it is
just one of those we should wish unmade. How could I ask you to
promise that I may behave as ill as I please? I dare say I shall be
frightened to tears when you are angry; but I shall never wish you to
retain your anger rather than vent it and forgive. The proverb says,
'Who punishes pardons; who hates awaits.' No, pray do not play with
me; I am so much in earnest. I know that I don't understand where and
why your thoughts and ways are so unlike ours. But--but--I thought--I
fancied--you seemed to hold the tie between man and wife something
more--faster--more lasting--than--our contract has made it."

"Certainly! With us it lasts for life at least; and even here, where
it may be broken at pleasure, I should not have thought that, on the
very bridal eve, the coldest heart could willingly look forward to its
dissolution."

She was too innocent of such a thought--perhaps too much absorbed by
her own purpose--to catch the hint of unjust reproach.

"Well, then," she said, with a desperate effort, in a voice that
trembled between the fear of offending by presumption or exaction, and
the desire to give utterance to her wish--"I want ... will you say
that--if by that time you do not think that I have been too faulty,
too undeserving--that I shall go with you when you quit this world?"
And, her ea