"How can I tell, sweetest? I had been thinking, as I said, a lot about you--and missing a lot--stockings, and all that"--his smile was charm itself; "then, when I saw your dear old head bob up all shaven and shorn!" he kissed it deliberately, and she laughed.
"For all that," she persisted, "I should like to understand."
"My dearest dear," he replied, "you are such a beggar for wanting to know and understand. Now I, my dear Marmie--I'm too happy to want to know anything! I'm content with what I have--and you are content, too, you know you are!"
There was no denying the fact. Content, indeed, was no word for the feeling that you were rapt away from the very possibility of care. There, in the very shadow of the grave, overlooking the Lake of Death, those two lovers found their joy enhanced by the uncertainty of life.
"I was chief mourner at six funerals this morning," Marmaduke would say sadly. "As fine fellows as ever stepped. Sometimes I wonder, darlingest, if I ought to come to you----"
"You can bring no more harm to me than I am in already," she would reply. "I am in the thick of it here. Indeed, I was wondering if I ought to let you come."
"Let me!" he would echo derisively. "As if you could stop me."
And in truth there was no gainsaying him, for Marmaduke, easy-going as a friend, was an imperious lover.
After he left her in the dawnings Marrion would take out the pocket Shakespeare she had brought with her and, sitting out under the purpling vines, read how the immortal lovers parted.
"I am content so thou wouldst have it so."