"Sometimes," she said, "I've been shaken about God. Was to-night—before you came. But He's made good—hasn't He?"
"He has," I said. "And now you're hooked up. And I wish it was to do all over again. I loved doing it."
"Did you?" said she.
Her eyes were bright and brave like two stars. She slipped her hand through my arm and we marched out of the opera-house. Half a dozen young globe-trotters were at the stage-door waiting to take a chance on Miss Green as she came out, but none of them spoke. We headed for the nearest city directory and looked up a minister.
II
I had married April; she cried when she thought she wasn't good enough for me; she smiled like the sun when I swore she was.
I had married June; she was like an armful of roses.
We weren't two; we were one. What alloy does gold make mixed with brass? We were that alloy. I was the brass.
We travelled down to Singapore first-class, with one-armed Yir Massir to look after us—down the old Hoogli with the stubs of half-burned Hindus bobbing alongside, crows sitting on 'em and tearing off strips. We ran aground on all the regular old sand-bars that are never twice in the same place; and one dusk we saw tigers come out of the jungle to drink. We'd both travelled quite some, but you wouldn't have thought it. Ivy Bower and Right Bower had just run away from school for to see the world "so new and all."
Some honey-moons a man keeps finding out things about his wife that he don't like—little tricks of temper and temperature; but I kept finding out things about mine that I'd never even dared to hope for. I went pretty near crazy with love of her. At first she was a child that had had a wicked, cruel nightmare—and I'd happened to be about to comfort her when she waked and to soothe her. Then she got over her scare and began to play at matrimony, putting on little airs and dignities—just like a child playing grown-up. Then all of a sudden it came to her, that tremendous love that some women have for some of us dogs of men. It was big as a storm, but it wasn't too big for her. Nothing that's noble and generous was too big for her; nor was any way of showing her love too little. Any little mole-hill of thoughtfulness from me was changed—presto!—into a chain o' mountains; but she thought in mountains and made mole-hills of 'em.