“Yes, this is real life; sudden and serious,” said Adele, “more serious than when we were at Olympus.”
“Tell me why you think so?”
“A betrothal is truth in words; marriage is truth in deeds.”
Paul put his arm around her and told her again how he felt and thought and wished to act for the very best, for both of them. His manner changed, however. It was less ardent and more devout. He held her hand as if it were very precious to him, that to touch her was a sacred privilege. Never before had she a realizing sense so intense, of that manly virtue, which she then recognized in her future husband; and for the first time she noticed he used a new expression. His words were forcible, indeed.
“Adele, I love you with all my soul and strength.” Then he bowed his head as if overcome.
From that moment Adele knew he was her husband both in spirit and in truth. It was a complete answer to her prayers for Paul’s good, when she had prayed in spirit and in truth for him; the natural consequence of her prayers, her belief in Paul, and her sincerity towards him. She might have reasonably called him her husband in her own mind, in the presence of the Holy Spirit of truth in nature and in religion; but she did not. If Paul had died suddenly, however, before their marriage, she no doubt would have done so—in spirit—and it would have been the truth.
A pause, yet not a rest. Thoughts active, although neither could speak. There was nothing more Paul could say. He had spoken the whole truth, in love—an ineffable divine experience. Youth’s foretaste of “Love divine, all love excelling.”
Adele was meditating as never before. Her thoughts flew as a bird flies hither and thither, from possibilities to other probabilities, future plans, future joys; flew outwards, then inwards, as a bird among the branches of the Tree of Life; seeking to know the good from the evil, the best from the better; wishing to pluck fruit from the Tree of Life, and yet preserve the integrity of her own conscious-self, her conscientious-self, as to what she ought to do.
Conscience flew to her mother to throw her arms around her mother’s neck and find sympathy, while mother’s love told the truth in maternal affection into her daughter’s ear; conscience flew to her father for consent and advice, to sit on his knee once more, and look in his face, and press his cheek, and run her fingers through his hair, and be caressed as “father’s little girl.” The thought of separation from loved ones, in any degree, what might it mean?—a leap in the dark?