"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."
He stopped, and, with a smile, kissed the girl tenderly. "Never fear, darling—that shall be made as the world wants it. I was thinking of the past, not the future. And if ours was a sin, it was one of passion only, and we whispered each other—did we not?—that He who gave the love would forgive its transgression." Then they walked on. In the distance the hill above
