_Olive._ Torment! torment! Think of what he this moment bears! Oh,
my father, my father! Paul Bayley, why have I wedded you this
dreadful day!

_Paul._ Hush! Thy father wished it, sweetheart.

_Olive._ I swear to you I'll never love any other than my father. I
love you not.

_Paul._ Thou needst not, poor lass!

_Olive_ (_clinging to him_). Nay, I love thee, but I hate myself for
it on this day.

_Paul_ (_caressing her_). Poor lass! Poor lass!

_Olive._ Why wear I this bridal gear, and my father over yonder on
his dreadful death-bed? Why could you not have gone your own way and
let me gone mine all the rest of my life in black apparel,
a-mourning for my father? That would have beseemed me. This needed
not have been so; it needed never have been so.

_Paul._ Never? I tell thee, sweet, as well say to these apple
blossoms that they need never be apples, and to that rose-bush
against the wall that its buds need not be roses. In faith, we be
far set in that course of nature, dear, with the apple blossoms and
the rose-buds, where the beginning cannot be without the end. Our
own motion be lost, and we be swept along with a current that is
mightier than death, whether we would have it so or not.