"You will give me your answer this afternoon?" he cried joyfully.
"I don't say that. It's my answer I shall know this afternoon. Yours you shall have to-morrow afternoon. You don't mind giving me one day's option of your hand?"
"One day's! When you have had—"
She interrupted impatiently. "Let bygones be bygones. You shall have a letter by Monday afternoon. But, oh, Heavens! how could we marry? You believe in nothing!"
"There's the Registrar."
She pouted: "Dry legality. No flowers, no organ, no feeling sweet and virginal in a long veil. Oh, dear! Besides, there's mother—"
"I don't object to the church ceremony."
"I'm glad. The law may end marriage. Marriage shouldn't begin with law. It ought to look beautiful at the start, at least, though one may know it's a shaky scraw."
"A shaky what?"
"Oh, it's an Irish term for a bit of black bog that looks like lovely green meadow. You step out so gaily on the glittering grass, and then squish! squash! down you go to choke in the ooze."