XX. — ILLUSION.
“How shall we be married?” Howard asked her in the late Autumn.
“I know it will not be in a church with ushers and bridesmaids and a crowd gaping at us. I suppose there is a public side to marriage since the state makes one enter into a formal contract. But that can be done privately. I should as soon think of driving down the Avenue with my arms about your neck as of a public wedding.”
“Thank you,” he laughed. “I was afraid—well, women are usually so fond of—but you’re not usual. Let us see. The minister is absolutely necessary, I suppose. Would one feel married if there were not a minister?”
“I don’t know—I feel—”
She hesitated and blushed but looked straight at him with that expression in her eyes which always made him think of their love as their religion.
“Feel—go on. I want to hear that very, very much.”
“I feel as if I were just as much married to you now as I ever could be.”
“And that is how I have felt ever since the day, when I hardly knew you, when you suddenly came into my life—my real, inner life where no one had been before—and sat down and at once made it look as if it were your home. And the place that had been lonely was lonely no more, and has not been since.”