Her literal interpretation was not a jest. He perceived that Dinah presented no playful mood. She was arguing as though concerned with facts, and not recognising any figurative significance in what he had told her about himself. For a moment, however, he could hardly believe she was in earnest. "If it was as easy as that," he said. "How d'you feel to it then?" "I feel to it as you do, with all my heart. God knows what I want--one thing afore all things and above all things: and that's to have you for my own--my own. And whether I can, or can't, my own you will be from this hour, since you want to be my own, Dinah." "And I will have it so. You're my life now--everything." "But you can't make me less than I am. It's no good saying that Gilbert Courtier's dead; and though I change my name for my own comfort, that's not to change it against the facts." "D'you want to go back to it then?" "Not I. I'll never go back, and 'tis no odds to me what I'm called; but a wife's a wife, and my wife must stand safe within the law--for her own safety--and her husband's honour." She stared at this. "D'you feel that?" "I do, Dinah." "That things like safety, or the law, matter?" "To you--not to me." "What do I know about the law--or care? D'you think I'm a coward? You've only got one name for me, and ban't the name I love best in the world good enough? Who else matters to you, if you're Lawrence Maynard to me? And what else matters to you if I love you? Words! What are words alongside the things they stand for? I want you, same as you want me. And whose honour's hurt?" "You feel all that?" "Not if you don't. But you do." His own standards failed for the time and he said somewhat more than he meant. Such love as Dinah's, such certainty as Dinah's, made doubt, built on old inherited instincts, look almost contemptible. Trouble of old had shaken these deep foundations; now happiness and pride at his splendid achievement similarly shook them. "Yes I do," he said. "There's naught else on God's earth; I'd let all go down the wind afore I'd lose what I've won. I can keep off words as easy as you; and the word that would come between me and such love as I've got for you was never spoke and never will be. Words are dust and can go to the dust. But----" He had recollected a fact beyond any power of words to annul. "There's a hard and fast reality, Dinah, and we've got to take it into account, for it can't be argued down, or thought away." "Then let it go--same as everything else have got to go. There's only one thing matters, I tell you, and we feel the same about it. Love's far too strong for all other realities, Lawrence. There's only one reality: that you and me are going to live together all our lives. What fact can stand against that? If facts were as big as the Beacon, they're naught against that fact. You be my own and I'm your own, and what else signifies?"