"I felt things was at a climax then; and I told him straight out that I knew what love was at last. I was gentle and kind to the poor chap; but he wasn't gentle and kind to me. He wanted to know the man, and that, of course, I couldn't tell him, though dearly I longed to. But things being as they are, I can't name you, Lawrence, though 'tis terrible hateful to me I can't. I said to Johnny 'twas no odds about the man for the present, and then he lost his temper and swore he'd find him out and do all manner of wicked deeds to him. Only his rage, of course, and nothing to trouble about, but so it is and I meant for you to know."
He considered and she spoke again.
"It makes me mad to think all we are to each other have got to be hid, as if we was ashamed of it instead of proud—proud. But Cousin Joe would abide by the letter against the spirit no doubt. He'd tell everybody you was married if we blazed out we were tokened; and now Mr. Withycombe's dead, there's not any in the Vale that would understand."
"Certainly there is not, Dinah—or beyond the Vale I reckon."
"All's one," she said. "In my eyes you're a free man, and just as right to find a mate as a bird in a tree. Yes, you are. I know what marriage means now, and I know what our marriage will mean. For that matter we are married in heart and soul."
"It's good to hear you say so," he answered. "My love's so true as yours, Dinah; but there's more mixed with it."
"Away with what be mixed with it! I won't have naught mixed with it, and no thought shall think any evil into it, Lawrence. You couldn't think evil for that matter; but men be apt, seemingly, to tangle up a straight thought by spinning other thoughts around it. And I won't have that. What be your thoughts that you say are mixed with the future? Can you name them? Can you think 'em out loud in words and look in my face while you do? I lay you can't! But, for that matter, I've been thinking too. And what I think mixes with what I feel, and makes all the better what I feel."
In her eagerness Dinah became rhetorical.
"I was turning over that widow at Barnstaple," she said—"the woman called Courtier, married to a dead man. And I was wondering why I thought twice of her even while I did so; for what be she to me? Not so much as the grass on the field-path I walk over. And what be she to you more than the dead? Be she real, Lawrence? Be she more real and alive to you than Gilbert Courtier, in his grave, beyond sight and sound of living men for evermore? Let the dead lie. You'm alive, anyway, and free in the Eye of God to marry me. And what matters except how soon, and when, and where?"
"You're a brave wonder," he said, "and the man you can love, who would miss you, must be a bigger fool than me. What's left be my work—and a glorious bit of work I reckon."