"It's just this, sir," explained the bridegroom, laying his fiddle across his lap, and speaking as if in answer to a question: "it's just this:—by trade you know me for a watchmaker, and for a Plymouth Brother by conviction. All the week I'm bending over a counter, and every Sabbath-day I speak in prayer-meeting what I hold, that life's a dull pilgrimage to a better world. If you ask me, sir, to-night, I ought to say the same. But a man may break out for once; and when so well as on his honeymoon? For a week I've been a free heathen: for a week I've been hiding here, living with the woman I love in the open air; and night after night for a week Annie here has clothed herself like a woman of fashion. Oh, my God! it has been a beautiful time—a happy beautiful time that ends to-night!"
He set down the fiddle, crooked up a knee and clasped his hands round it, looking at Annie.
"Annie, girl, what is it that we believe till to-morrow morning? You believe—eh?—that 'tis a rare world, full of delights, and with no ugliness in it?"
Annie nodded.
"And you love every soul—the painted woman in the streets no less than your own mother?"
Annie nodded again. "I'd nurse 'em both if they were sick," she said.
"One like the other?"
"And there's nothing shames you?" Here he rose and took her hand.
"You wouldn't blush to kiss me before master here?"
"Why should I?" She gave him a sober kiss, and let her hand rest in his.
I looked at her. She was just as quiet as in the old days when she used to lay my table. It was like gazing at a play.