“Maybe ye don’t ... know it Jack,” she murmured, “but ye’re jest seekin’ ... ter let me ... die ... easy in my mind ... and happy.”
“Before God I am not,” he vehemently contradicted her. “I’m not trying to give but to take. Whether you get well or not, Glory, I want to fight for your life and your love. We’ve faced death, together. We’ve seen things nakedly—together. For neither of us can there ever be any true life—except together.”
His breath was coming with the swift intensity that was almost a sob and, in the eyes that bent over her, Glory read the hunger that could not be counterfeited.
“Anyhow,” she faltered, “we’ve had—this minute.”
Spurrier rose at last and called the others back. He himself did not know when once more he took her hand and the preacher stood over them, whether her responses to the services would be affirmative or negative.
To Spurrier marriage had always seemed an opportunity. It was a thing in which an ambitious man could no more afford yielding to uncalculating impulses than in the forming of a major business connection. Marriage must carry a man upward toward the peak of his destiny, and his wife must bring as her dowry, social reënforcements and distinction.
Now, in the darkening room of a log house, with figures clad in patches and hodden-gray, he held the hand that was too weak to close responsively upon his own, and listened to the words of a shaggy-headed preacher, whose beard was a stubble and whose lips moved over yellow and fanglike teeth.
Confusedly he heard the questions and his own firm responses to the simple service of marriage as rendered by the backwoods preacher, then his heart seemed to stop and stand as the words were uttered to which Glory must make her answer.