But can any man, even a Scot, let this weigh when he is fast in love with an incredible apparition, who has saved his life and lets him see that his love is not unacceptable? To my mind, Archie deserves neither blame nor pity—beauty and guts mayn't be a pass into the Kingdom of Heaven, but they carry a girl a long way towards Holy Matrimony.
Judge it as you may, the marriage took place not many weeks after their meeting in that Carpathian valley, as soon in fact as Norah had got home and Archie had been released from his London hospital.
In spite of the quietness of the wedding, our modern Argus got hold of the story and billed them as 'Red Cross Romance: Peer's Daughter Rescues Artillery Lieutenant.'
The Peer let it be felt that he regretted the rescue; while the father of the lieutenant indicated that if he went his own way, he must pay it.
This lack of enthusiasm emphasised the romantic nature of the union, and the happiness of the young couple was only interrupted by the end of Archie's sick leave, and his return to Flanders.
From then life began to thrust them apart, as surely as a tree-root forces asunder two stones in a wall. Not that these two stones can ever have been very truly laid. Archie's reserved devotion can never have satisfied Norah's capacity for passion. She asked for the wine of life and got its breakfast food. But while that Carpathian picture was not effaced, she would see no flaws in her hero. Nor, during his long absences at the front, and his short visits on leave, did she perceive the difference between the man and the picture. She longed passionately for his return and loved him dearly when he came. But apart from his brief periods of leave, the first hours of which were always wasted in a sort of strangerhood, they had no life in common to buttress up Romance and to let picture tone into fact.
Norah did not lack humour, and had war allowed, daily companionship would have built up affection for the man to supplement and in time supplant adoration of the hero. The daily letters which passed between the flat in Baker Street and the dug-out in Flanders—Archie's rather formal chronicles and Norah's passionate little notes—could not take the place of the personal intercourse which war denied them.
I know it is the thought of meeting the object of their passion daily at breakfast that heads off many a Benedict and Beatrice. But it is only by submitting to the humanising influence of small daily contacts that love will provide a working basis for marriage. Without this humanising, love does not develop but starves."
"I didn't know you were married, Ross," I interrupted.
"I'm not," he replied, and went on with his story.