"How can I think of anniversaries when I have 6,000 souls under my charge."
"You can think of them very well, that is to say if marriage is the sacred thing I always thought it was. Don't you remember the words in Aurora Leigh?"
"'Beloved, let us work so well
Our work shall be the better for our love,
And still our love be sweeter for our work.'"
"Don't give up loving, Luke."
"Give up loving!" said Luke amazed. "Why, you are all the world to me."
"Then tell me so sometimes," said Rachel. "Wives need to be told. If not they, the husband and wife I mean, drift into such commonplace, humdrum, phlegmatic married couples."
Luke laughed. He had not noticed the slight tremor in her voice.
"By-the-bye," he said, "I hope I shall get a letter from West to-morrow about the estimate of the new gas stove to be put in the chancel."
Rachel, who had been watching the changing shadows on the mountains, now turned and looked at him. Was he really thinking about gas stoves! Then she laughed, and he vaguely wondered what she found to amuse her in gas stoves.
They were silent till they arrived at the end of the Lake.