"I do, Dinah."
"That things like safety, or the law, matter?"
"To you—not to me."
"What do I know about the law—or care? D'you think I'm a coward? You've only got one name for me, and ban't the name I love best in the world good enough? Who else matters to you, if you're Lawrence Maynard to me? And what else matters to you if I love you? Words! What are words alongside the things they stand for? I want you, same as you want me. And whose honour's hurt?"
"You feel all that?"
"Not if you don't. But you do."
His own standards failed for the time and he said somewhat more than he meant. Such love as Dinah's, such certainty as Dinah's, made doubt, built on old inherited instincts, look almost contemptible. Trouble of old had shaken these deep foundations; now happiness and pride at his splendid achievement similarly shook them.
"Yes I do," he said. "There's naught else on God's earth; I'd let all go down the wind afore I'd lose what I've won. I can keep off words as easy as you; and the word that would come between me and such love as I've got for you was never spoke and never will be. Words are dust and can go to the dust. But——"
He had recollected a fact beyond any power of words to annul.
"There's a hard and fast reality, Dinah, and we've got to take it into account, for it can't be argued down, or thought away."