CHAPTER VII
The ruins of an old iron foundry stood on this river road. The roof had fallen in long ago. The walls and gables, built of rough stone alone remained. Creeping vines covered them. The sun dipping low upon the horizon shone through the open places where windows had been. But the shadows were already deepening in the great, open doorway beside the road.
Helen was for turning back now. She was all brisked up with the desire to hurry home with this sweet burden of happiness.
“No, let’s go up there,” he said, making a gesture toward this door.
They climbed the slope from the road, hand in hand, and sat upon a long stone step, the fields before them changing already beneath the lavender mists of twilight, the river singing below, the bright squares of sunlight fading from the black smoked walls within, the shadows in there deepening to darkness behind them. But what soft effulgence in this girl’s face! Already the candles upon her altar burned. For so many years she kept that look of pale candle light in the dark. Her features changed; the skin lost its rosy glow; her beauty passed away; but this serene brightness never faded. When I knew her long afterwards she was in the full bloom of her years, her eyes of that calmer blue women get when all the storms of love and loving have passed and left the heart motionless with the awful peace of victory over love. And she was still thinking of love, as one recalls an epitaph!
Besides the happiness of having her beside him, clasped like a banner to his side, George had something to say. He must make Helen understand one thing, and he thought he could do this now without risking his happiness. He did not anticipate that any emergency would ever arise between them that would force him to fall back on this conviction about love; but he had it; he had studied the science of social ethics in the university—an illuminating subject under a singularly broad-minded doctor of philosophy named Herron.
The ethics were binding, of course, but between the lines and the laws Herron interpolated his own views on love. He had more than once attacked what he called the barbarous “contract of marriage.” Divorce was one of the articles of his creed. When Nature called for a separation of the contracting parties, it was abominable not to yield to this natural law, otherwise you profaned that most sacred of all things—love, and so on and so forth.
George entertained a profound respect for Herron. Most of the young men in his classes did. Still, they referred to him as “that fellow Herron,” and discussed his views more than they did those of any other member of the faculty. In this way George had obtained one of his strongest convictions, a sort of pet moral; and as he had already taken occasion to inform Helen, “no man on God’s green earth was more faithful to his convictions.”
“You know what I believe about love,” he began, drawing her closer to him according to this faith, it appeared.
“Me!” she answered with charming confidence.