A tear fell. It roused the man’s tenderness, melted the cold weight of misgiving that had held him silent. He felt that he had behaved brutally to her. She was his wife; nothing could alter it. Cruelly vain now were searchings of heart and conscience. He had caused her unhappiness already. In the revulsion of feeling he broke into passionate speech, bending as he walked, to whisper in her ear. He spoke foolish words of comfort, chided her loverwise for vain fancies, explained his previous mood of seriousness. It was a solemn step they had taken. He was trying to realise that he held her happiness in his hands for the rest of her life. Minna began to brighten.
“It is foolish to cry,” she said, “but I was hungering for a word.”
He laughed gaily, to cheer her. She must laugh, too, like a happy bride, to please her lord. He demanded to see the wedding ring. She held up her gloveless left hand. Her heart grew warm again, as the symbol of their union gleamed before the eyes of both. A little later, she was nestling in his arms, murmuring her content in low dove notes that stole sweetly over his senses.
Thus began their married life. In moments of intoxication they touched some of the lower stars. In sober hours they trod upon indubitable earth, which each pretended to call the floor of paradise. When the Trinity law sittings commenced, Hugh was forced to return to London. On the evening before his departure, they were sitting together on the pier, somewhat silent. Minna sighed her regret. The end of the honeymoon already. Although it was not the poor tragedy:—“Déjà!—Enfin!”—yet Hugh’s responsive, “Yes, already,” was somewhat lacking in spontaneity. Minna marked it, with a little pang of mortification, but she said, indulgently:
“I believe you want to get back to your horrid briefs.”
He did not deny the fact. “I must lose no chances now, dear. Energy is doubly necessary.”
“There ought to be no work in the world,” she answered, in her slow, plaintive way. “I wish we could live just as we have been doing.”
Hugh protested. His blindest flatterer could not call him a fanatical Carlylean in his views of the nobility of toil, but purposeful joining in the great struggle for existence was a condition of moral health. He apologised for the platitude. Minna laughed, dubbed it an old wives’ fable to be ranked with the proverbial but fallacious advantages of early rising. She wanted nothing in life but love. It was its own purpose. It was the heart of life.
“But the heart cannot exist by itself,” he answered, earnestly. “It must have its clothing of flesh, its supply of blood. And the stronger and more vigorous these outer walls of life are, the truer does it beat.”
“I think you only look upon love as one of the outer graces of life and not the heart at all,” she said, pensively. “For you, the heart is something quite different.”