“You don’t take me,” she said. “I give myself, I give myself to John Sanbourne, as I gave myself to John Denin.”
“But we’ll be poor,” he told her. “John Denin’s money can’t come to us—”
“I have enough of my own now. And if I hadn’t, I’d beg with you. We could be tramps together.”
Denin laughed out joyously, almost roughly, and clasped her tight. “It won’t come to that, my darling! Perhaps I can write another book. Yes, I can! It shall be called ‘The Honeymoon.’”
“Let us go away somewhere,” Barbara implored, “where nobody will know us, and we can love each other in peace till we die: for we belong to one another in God’s sight and our own. Yes, till we die. And afterwards—afterwards! Oh, you have taught me that!”
“I have pledged myself to go to Serbia,” Denin said.
“Then I’ll go to Serbia with you, that’s all! What does it matter where?”
“And the world—and Gorston Old Hall?” he heard himself asking.
“Neither do they matter. Nothing matters but you. And God will understand—because I am your wife, and belong to no one else, or ever, ever did.”
“You are right,” Denin answered, holding her very close. “God will understand. You’re mine, and I’m yours, and nothing shall part us again.”