"Our first duty is to God." Then, with a quick movement that was an instant's reversion to her girlhood, she slipped her hand into his, pressing it, and rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. "Tris, that sounded as though I were criticizing. I didn't mean it. You're so good-natured and tender-hearted—perhaps too forgiving. But at the bottom we think and feel the same about things, I know. Only you're too good for me."
"Don't let's talk about our respective goodness," he implored lightly. "We shall quarrel. Let's go and prospect for your rose-garden instead."
They went down the steps together, her hands linked over his arm, and followed the path of sunlight through the wilderness of wild-growing flowers and high luxuriant trees which Gaya perhaps deliberately had left untouched.
"We shall have to make it trim and neat," Anne said, sighing. "My roses will never grow in all this shadow. Besides, it's so untidy. Those big palms ought to be cut down, too, don't you think?"
She always appealed to him differently, yet as though his agreement was an assured thing. He looked up, catching a line of azure between the foliage. It seemed to him that for an instant he breathed the scented virgin air of the forests, that soon night would be creeping in stealthily between the slender trunks of the trees and that he would lie full length by the camp-fire and watch the distant beacons flame up in the violet darkness. It was a picture flashed from his memory, perhaps in contrast to those smooth, cool, civilized days among the hills. He closed his eyes to it.
"You must have things as you like them, dear," he said. "I want you to have everything—everything that makes you happy."
"Really? Do you mean it?" There was a breathless eagerness in her voice, no mere acknowledgment. He paused an instant and looked down into her earnest face. In a vague, instinctive way she had often resented his eyes—or rather the something which their clouded introspection held from her. Now she thrilled under them. They were clear, intensely, fiercely living.
"Yes, I do mean it," he said passionately. "Anne—if I thought you happy, I should be content. If I knew of anything that would give you only a moment's pleasure, I wouldn't rest till I brought it you. I want you to be happy—more than I can say."
She flushed girlishly.
"Do you love me so much as all that, Tris?"