The night was dark, and the wind was chill outside, but light and warmth were in two happy hearts. With arms entwined and clasped hands they walked down the familiar road, transfigured now into strange beauty at every step. When two souls first pour out their flood of love, whatever the present happiness, it is the unconscious sense of a glad future that thrills them. It was the half-conscious sense of a sad past shared together that touched these two to-night.
"I feel like another man," said Christian; "to have the weight of these six years of disguise lifted away is a new birth." He seemed to breathe more freely.
"How glad I am it is gone, this haunting secret," said Mona, with a sigh of relief; but suddenly a fresh torment suggested itself. "What will people say?" she asked.
"Don't think of that. Let people say what they will. In these relations of life the world has always covered its nakedness in the musty rags of its old conventions, and dubbed its clothes morality. We'll not heed what people say, Mona."
"But the child?" said the girl, with some tremor of voice.
Christian answered the half-uttered question.
"Ruby is as much my daughter as Rachel was the daughter of Laban, and you are even now as much my wife as she was the wife of Jacob."
Mona glanced up into his face. "Can this be Christian?" she thought.
"Where one man sets himself apart for one woman," he continued, "there is true marriage, whether the mystic symbol of the Church be used or not. No; I've feared the world too long. I mean to face it now."
"I'm afraid I don't understand, Christian," answered Mona. "But surely to defy the world is foolishness, and marriage is a holy thing."