"Do not talk to me of contracts," she said. "I am thinking of nothing but our—wedding."
Still mystical, still enigma, still woman, she would have it that the stars, the mountains—-the witnesses—and not ourselves, made the wedding. I left it so, sure of nothing so much as that, whatever her way of thought might be, it was better than my own.
"But if I do not sign this?" she asked at length.
"Then we are not married."
She sighed and laid down the pen. "Then I shall not sign it—yet," she said.
I caught up her hand as though I would write for her.
"No," she said, "it shall be only our engagement, our troth between us. This will be our way. I have not yet been sufficiently wooed, John Cowles!"
I looked into her eyes and it seemed to me I saw there something of the same light I had seen when she was the masked coquette of the Army ball—the yearning, the melancholy, the mysticism, the challenge, the invitation and the doubting—ah, who shall say what there is in a woman's eye! But I saw also what had been in her eyes each time I had seen her since that hour. I left it so, knowing that her way would be best.
"When we have escaped," she went on, "if ever we do escape, then this will still be our troth, will it not, John Cowles?"
"Yes, and our marriage, when you have signed, now or any other time."