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.
"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."
"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 names in it in case of any letters...."
"Yes, very much," returned Viola promptly, with a little side smile at me, and sat down and wrote in it.
When she had done so, she closed the book, and as the maid was in and out of the room during luncheon, it was not till it was finished and cleared away and we were alone that I asked her what she had written.