“One more little gift,” said Ramón.
He made Kate put over Cipriano’s head a blue cord bearing a little symbol of Quetzalcoatl, the snake in silver and the bird in blue turquoise. Cipriano put over her head the same symbol, but in gold, with a bird in black dull jet, and hanging on a red cord.
“There!” said Ramón. “That is the symbol of Quetzalcoatl, the Morning Star. Remember the marriage is the meeting-ground, and the meeting-ground is the star. If there be no star, no meeting-ground, no true coming together of man with the woman, into a wholeness, there is no marriage. And if there is no marriage, there is nothing but an agitation. If there is no honourable meeting of man with woman and woman with man, there is no good thing come to pass. But if the meeting come to pass, then whosoever betrays the abiding place, which is the meeting-ground, which is that which lives like a star between day and night, between the dark of woman and the dawn of man, between man’s night and woman’s morning, shall never be forgiven, neither here nor in the hereafter. For man is frail and woman is frail, and none can draw the line down which another shall walk. But the star that is between two people and is their meeting-ground shall not be betrayed.
“And the star that is between three people, and is their meeting-ground, shall not be betrayed.
“And the star that is between all men and all women, and between all the children of men, shall not be betrayed.
“Whosoever betrays another man, betrays a man like himself, a fragment. For if there is no star between a man and a man, or even a man and a wife, there is nothing. But whosoever betrays the star that is between him and another man, betrays all, and all is lost to the traitor.
“Where there is no star and no abiding place, nothing is, so nothing can be lost.”
CHAP: XXI. THE OPENING OF THE CHURCH.
Kate went back to her house in Sayula, and Cipriano went back to his command in the city.
“Will you not come with me?” he said. “Shall we not make a civil marriage, and live in the same house together?”