And in the quiet shelter of his arms I listened to the very perfect things he chose to say. That by reason of the 'worship' he had sworn to give me, there could be no 'demands,' only a lovely gift most urgently desired if I could give a thing, so priceless, willingly.
And then at something wistful in his face, my love rose up and cast out fear—that craven thing. And there was a little kiss upon my husband's lips, so small and light, he hardly knew it there till it had gone—that little first one that I ever gave him 'of my own accord.' He took my hands and with the worship deepening in his eyes he asked,—
'Is my beloved mine?'
There flashed into my mind those words which, I suppose, express most fully the completeness and the glory and perfection of our human love, and which convey, so perfectly, the utter rest and peace and sweet contentment which both should find in marriage, when they love.
So I leaned against my husband and he stooped to hear the whispered words,—
'I am my beloved's, and his desire is towards me.'
So I gave. And in the old surrender of the woman to the man's exultant mastery, I, too, found love's consummation—and lo!—there was bread and wine—a chalice and a sacrament.
I have been married, really, such a very little while, yet in these fifteen months in India I have learned that sometimes women do not give ungrudgingly—that people speak and write of marriage as if its sweet abandonment were a thing of which to be ashamed. But if it were, would Christ have used it as a type of that other union—mystic and wonderful—between His Church and Him?
And so it seems to me that first should come the 'marriage of the minds.' If he 'demands' and she gives grudgingly or of necessity, or with regret, as if for something spoiled—they too are 'wasteful' and have 'cheapened Paradise.' They have not discerned the Sacrament, but have
'Spoiled the bread, and spilled the wine
Which, spent with due respective thrift
Had made brutes men, and men divine.'