If it were frankly a
contract--'Yes, I give you my body and my dowry.' 'Yes, you give me your
name and your state.' It is of the coarse, horrible things one must pass
through in life--but to call the Great Spirit's blessing upon it, as an
exaltation! To stand there and talk of love! Ah--that is what must make
God angry, and I feel for Him."
Paul noticed that she spoke as if she had no realisation of the lives of
lesser persons who might possibly wed because they were "mated" as
well--not for political reasons or ambition of family. Her keen senses
divined his thought.
"Yes, beloved, you would say--?"
"Only that supposing you were not married to any one else, we should be
swearing the truth if we swore before God that we loved. I would make any
vows to you from my soul, in perfect honesty, for ever and ever, my
darling Queen."
His blue eyes, brimming with devotion and conviction of the truth of his
thought, gazed up at her. And into her strange orbs there came that same
look of tenderness that once before had made them as a mother's watching
the gambols of her babe.
"There, there," she said. "You would swear them and hug your chains of
roses--but because they were chains they would turn heavy as lead. Make no
vows, sweetheart! Fate will force you to break them if you do, and then
the gods are angry and misfortune follows.
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