“Oh, yes, she will,” said Davis. “Old Selden has promised to help me. And if she doesn’t, it won’t make any difference. I’m of age. We won’t starve.”
Selden looked at him with interest; already he detected in him a new spirit. He was more of a man.
“Yes, I will help,” he said; “but whether your mother consents or not, you were right not to wait. There is a very great English poet,” he went on to Madame Ghita, “named Robert Browning—perhaps you have heard of him—and he was a great poet because he was first of all a great philosopher. One of his poems is about a man who loved the wife of another man, and she also loved him, and they decided to go away together and be happy. But first one thing intervened, and then another; the days slipped by, and the months and the years—before they knew it, age was upon them, their blood grew cold—it was too late.”
“Yes—and then?” asked Madame Ghita, who had been listening with shining eyes.
“Browning points out that their indecision, their cowardice, was far worse, far more damning, than if they had seized their happiness, though that was a crime, and he adds that a man should contend to the uttermost for his life’s set prize, be it what it will—vice or virtue—for the worst sin of all is ‘the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin.’”
“And he is right,” said madame in a low voice.
“Of course he is right—that is why I tell Davis he is wise to seize his happiness while it is within reach. Whether his mother consents or not—that does not matter.”
“Is it true, then, monsieur,” asked the girl, who had been listening to all this with great eyes, “that in America one can marry without the consent of the parents?”
“But yes,” Selden assured her. “With us it makes no difference whether or not the parents consent. Many times they do not even know about it until after their children are married.”
“It is scarcely to be believed!”