to it. And, of course, just the
same law holds good for the man."

"Outsiders like the world and the law ought never to be allowed to
interfere between a man and a woman. They never can know the right or
the wrong of their relations to each other well enough to enable them
to be judges. Nobody ever knows but the man and the woman themselves,
and they ought to be left alone; what they do, whether in quarrelling
or love, ought to be as private as the prayers one sends to Heaven."

She paused, and through the window came the gay, loud, triumphant call
of the cuckoo seeking its mate of an hour in the heart of the glad
green wood.

Viola listened with a look of delight.

"How happy they are!" she said. And the note came again, instinct with
love and joy.

"How well Nature arranged everything, and how Man has spoiled it all!
Fancy passion, the most subtle, evanescent, delicate, elusive
emotion--and yet one so strong--fancy that being bound down by crabbed
and crooked laws, being confined by wretched little conventions!"

"But, anyway, we shall have to say we are married here."

"Oh, say anything you like," rejoined Viola laughing; "saying doesn't
do any harm."

"Yes, but then we must fix some place where we've _been_ married and
all that, do you see; we'd better go somewhere further off I think and
stay away some time and come back married. I do feel very worried
about it, Viola. I think it would be much simpler to do it than to
lie about it."

Viola jumped up and came over to me.

"Dear Trevor, I am _so_ sorry you are worried, but really it will work
out all right. We will go abroad somewhere from here, we might go to
Rome, it's a lovely time of year, and then to Sicily, to Taormina, ...
and we'll stay away a year and you finish the picture and I'll write
an opera, and then we'll come back married to town in the season and
we'll have _been_ married before we leave England of course, and then
it will be a year ago, and I don't think anybody will bother about it
much."

I looked down upon her. She was so pretty and so dear to me: I must
keep her, and if those were the only terms upon which she would stay
with me I must accept them.

The landlady came into the room at this minute followed by the maid to
lay the luncheon; in the landlady's hand was a fat, black book which
she presented diffidently to Viola.

"It's the Visitors' book, ma'am," she said. "I thought you and the
gentleman would like to write your n