“Yes. It’s forbidden, by customs hereabout, for man and woman, as we, alone to converse face to face; perhaps wisely, if one be bad and the other weak. Yet the custom is heathenish—low moral tone engendering mighty suspicions!”
“Did my priest think me a heathen?”
“No, not that; but they say the moon makes lovers and others mad. I was wondering whether I was dealing with a bundle of romancings or an earnest girl?”
Delicately the maiden avoided the query with another:
“You loved Mary: why did you not wed her?”
“Woman again; doomed to make all vistas end in wedlock. With your sex love, beginning to give, gives all readily, and seems to find no rest until there’s conjugal union.”
“I have not desired to give all that way to those I’ve loved!”
“It is all or nothing. Ye women love only relatives, and never cease to desire to make all relatives whom ye want to love. Why, girl, my Mary is a saint; she died ages ago, after the flesh; but as a model for all womankind lives forever,”
“How was she your Mary, then?”
“She belongs to every noble minded man as his inspirer.”