“George, may I be a Roman Catholic if I like?”
“No, Nouna.”
“Why not?”
“You mustn’t choose a religion in a hurry, any more than you may a husband. In both cases, one ought to be enough for a lifetime; and if you once begin to change your mind about either, you never know when to stop.”
“But I had my choice of a husband, and I didn’t of a religion; I had to take what was given me.”
“You would never do for a Catholic, Nouna. They have to confess all their sins, even very little ones that you think nothing of.”
“Well, that’s what you’re always wanting me to do.”
“See then. You shall go to Mass every Sunday and then confess your sins to me, and you will be the very best of Catholics.”
“But, George, George,” she began, almost in a whisper, holding his arm tighter, and looking away over the Place de la Concorde, which they were now crossing, to the trees of the Tuileries, “there are some things—not sins—that one doesn’t—like—to tell—I don’t know why—but they make one think of so many things—that all seem new—and make one feel—like a different person. I suppose a man—never feels like that, but I’m a woman—quite a woman—now, George.”
They walked on without speaking after that, till they got among the trees; then both stopped and looked at each other—shy, for that little whispered suggestion made each appear to the other in a new and sanctified light. The influence of the solemn and impressive Church rites was upon them still, and the bright sun was playing upon their earnest faces through a moving trellis-work of leaves. They had come to a moment which was to be the sweetest in all their lives but one; a moment of perfect confidence, perfect happiness, perfect hope. So they stood quite silently in an ecstasy of contented love, each reading beautiful meanings in the other’s steadfast eyes, each seeing and worshipping, in this moment of exalted human feeling, what was best and most worshipful in the other. They felt so strong, so radiant as they walked home, she leaning upon him and not talking at all, that every evil which had been a burden yesterday and would be a burden to-morrow, became a mere shadow slinking into corners and dwindling into insignificance before the flood of sunshine in their hearts. Chloris White, Rahas, Ben Hassan, and the odious Gurton were mere names to George that day, and even when with the following morning the drudgery and petty annoyances of workaday life began again, he carried in his heart such a spring of sweet human happiness that he received the snubs of his chief as cheerfully as if they had been compliments, and bore with fortitude the discovery that Monsieur Ben Hassan had “gone away for a few days on business,” leaving his premises in the charge of a stolid boy of thirteen or so, who knew nothing definite about his employer’s movements. George therefore kept the earrings in his possession and waited for some claim to be made. It came at the end of a week in the shape of a bill for twelve hundred and fifty francs, ten of which had been paid on account, for a pair of diamond ear-studs supplied to Monsieur Lauriston. George sent back the ear-studs by registered post with a letter threatening Ben Hassan with the police court. In a few days he got back the ear-studs from the post-office, as the person Ben Hassan was not to be found at the address given. George took no further steps until he was summoned before the Civil Tribunal, where he appeared in the full belief that he had only to relate the facts of the case to confound Ben Hassan and lay him open to the charge of perjury. To his great astonishment and indignation, however, Ben Hassan solemnly swore that he had sold the diamonds as real stones, and calling upon George to produce them, challenged any one in the court to assert that it was possible to suppose they could be bought for ten francs. Could the Englishman’s wife assert that she did not know them to be real? George had not dared to bring his wife into court, fearing the effects of the excitement upon her. He weakened his case by asserting emphatically that Ben Hassan was in the pay of a man who wished to ruin him: for he had no proofs to bring forward, and the foreigner’s halting French in which he made the accusation compared so unfavourably with the torrent of eloquence with which the artful Parisian refuted it, that, on Ben Hassan’s refusing to take back the jewels, the magistrate ordered the Englishman to pay the amount claimed, in monthly instalments of five hundred francs.