‘You have never told me where we are to spend our honeymoon. Celia has been worrying me with questions about our plans, and I have found it difficult to evade her. I did not like to confess my ignorance.’
A simple and a natural question surely, yet John Treverton started, as at the sharpest thrust that Fate could have at him.
‘My dearest love—I—I have really not thought about it,’ he answered, stumblingly. ‘We will go anywhere you like. We will decide to-morrow, after the wedding.’
‘Is not that a rather unusual mode of proceeding?’ asked Laura, with a faint laugh.
She was somewhat wounded by this show of indifference as to the very first stage in their journey through life. She would have liked her lover to be full of wild schemes, to be eager to take her everywhere—to the Engadine, the Black Forest, the English Lakes, Killarney, the Trossachs—all in a breath.
‘Are not all the circumstances of our marriage unusual?’ he replied gravely. ‘There is only one thing certain, there is only one thing sweet and sacred in the whole business—we love each other truly and dearly. That is certain, is it not, Laura?’
‘On my side quite certain.’
‘And on my side quite as certain as that I live and that I shall die. Our love is deep and fixed, rooted in the very ground of our lives, is it not, Laura? Nothing, no stroke of time or fate can change it.’
‘No stroke of time or fate can change my love for you,’ she said, solemnly.
‘That is all I want to know. That is the certainty which makes my soul glad and hopeful.’