"Don't, Quentin—it's for that very reason...."
"Yes," he said bitterly, "I remember how your reasons go—the boys have their secrets, so you must be without one; the boys have made a pretty general hash of law and order, so you must be a kind of Sunday-school ma'am. Really, Janet!"
"You don't understand what it is to live with people who think you ever so much better than you really are—you have to keep it up somehow."
"But surely you don't think you'll be committing a crime by giving our love a chance. You can't be such a prude as to stickle for a ceremony—a few lines scribbled, a few words muttered."
"It wouldn't be so bad if that were all. But it's no good trying to prove that you're simply offering me marriage with the ceremony left out. In some cases that might be true, but not in ours. You can't give the name of marriage to a few hurried meetings, all secrecy and lies. Things are bad enough as they are, without adding—that mockery."
Quentin sighed.
"You're an extraordinary woman, Janey; you breathe the pure spirit of recklessness and paganism—and then suddenly you give vent to feelings that would become Hesba Stretton. You're a moralist at bottom—every woman is. There's no use looking for the Greek in a woman—they're all Semitic at heart, every one of 'em. You'll begin to quote the Ten Commandments in a minute."
Janey said nothing, and for some time they did not move. The wind rushed up to the farmhouse, blustered round it, and sighed away. The sunshine began to slant on the woods, tarnishing their western rims.
Then suddenly the kettle began to sing. They both lifted their heads as they heard it—it reminded them of the meal they were to have together.
"Janey, will you make tea?"