She was quite happy in their present fellowship, but she knew it could not continue so, indefinitely. A man always wants more. The woman gives.
She felt towards this man as she had never felt towards any man before. Without a word spoken, she was satisfied as to the integrity of his intentions, as she had never been of any of those who had approached her in that old life, and she had been approached by many. But the coinage of love about the Court had grown as debased as did the paper money of the Republic later on. Whispers of love had become but fair cloaks for foul deeds. This man had whispered nothing, but she understood him and held him in honour.
And she was in no hurry. His love would not burn out, or she was much mistaken in him. The flame repressed burns brightest in the end.
And then ... and then.... Well, she sometimes laid hold of the future by the ears, as it were, and held its changing face while she peered intently into it, and endeavoured to read there all that it might mean for her.
Sooner or later he would open his heart to her—and that would be the first change. Their relationship would of necessity become closer and warmer. She would welcome that. It would bring great happiness to them both.
And then—later on—sometime—when all hope of rescue or escape had left them ... he would ask still more of her.... That was inevitable.... And in her heart, hiding behind a thinning cloud of doubt, which had, when first it came upon her, been tinged with dismay, she knew he would be right, and that in consenting, she would do no wrong, although it must run counter to all her normal views of right and wrong.
She faced it all squarely and honestly,—Courtship properly ends in Marriage. If by this accident of their strange fate the regular marriage rites prescribed by the law of the land could not take place, they would have to content themselves without them. It was inevitable.
Elemental views of right and wrong were indeed tap-rooted in her heart and safe from bruising. But she recognised that circumstances alter cases and that normal views were out of place here.
And as to the law of the land—what country claimed this bank of sand she did not know. It was a No Man's Land, outside the pale of all laws save God's and Nature's.
With no man she had ever met, except this man, could she have imagined herself considering possibilities such as these. But with him she would feel as safe and happy as if all the archbishops and bishops in the land had performed the ceremony. For, after all, it was only man's law and man's ceremony; and God's law and Nature's were mightier than these.