"It's cruel of life," she cried. "It's hard and cruel of life to make love like ours so difficult. Open air, daylight creatures, like us, to be called to plot and scheme and hide against the frozen silliness of the world. Just the things I hate most. And now we must trust the house a little bird have made with things that we'd both be proud to shout from the church steeple!"
"I know every bit what you're feeling. I feel it too—I hate it more than you do—knowing what you are. It will soon be over."
"I'll come up and look at you anyhow," said Dinah. "That won't shock the people; and I dare say, now that Susan knows what it is to love a man—but don't you fear. I won't kiss you even with my eyes, Lawrence."
"Susan wouldn't see nothing for that matter," he said. "Love be a dour pastime for her and Palk as things are. They be like us in a way—frightened to look at each other under that roof."
"But firm," she said. "Cousin Joe ain't going to choke Susan off it?"
"Not him. She'll take Thomas, so sure as you take me."
Dinah was cheerful again before he left her.
"When we'm married, I'll always be wanting to kiss you afore the people," she said, "just for the joy of doing it openly."
Then they parted, to meet no more in secret until they should never part again.
He half regretted her determination to sail with him, as he tramped home; yet he felt in no mind to argue the point. In his present spirit, sharing her indignation that his fellow men would thrust him away from Dinah for ever if they could, he cared little more than she for what their world might say and think when they had vanished from it for a larger.