“He can be done without, and so can the whole service, which is really only a melancholy mockery. Oh, never, never again will I repeat those phrases formally at the bidding of a clergyman or any one else. The ‘love, honour, and obey’ will be between you and me, Jack, and two of the three will be contingencies.” “Oh, I say!” “I sympathize with you and all that, of course; but I can only promise to love you; the honour and obedience----” “Oh, throw them in to make up weight!” “They are both conditional. But we can hope for the best.... Jack, I would not go through another marriage ceremony in a church even if there was no other way of getting married. The horrible mockery! Think what would have happened if that man whom I had promised before God’s altar to honour, love, and obey had come straight to me on getting out of gaol! Could he not have claimed me as his wife?” “Not he. There is no law that could compel you to go with him.” “Then there was no sacred obligation implied in the vows, as they call them; and every sensible person is aware of this, and yet the mockery of repeating the words is carried on day by day. Jack, I am willing to believe that God instituted marriage, but not the marriage service according to the Church of England.” “I agree with you, my dearest; but for the sake of peace and quiet, and all that, don’t you say that to my mother.” “Nothing will induce me. I am not given to forcing my views on this or any other subject on people who may have feelings or prejudices in favour of the conventional. If I were to suggest to my father a marriage before a registrar or in a British Consulate he would look on me as an outcast.” “He goes back to the Heptarchy. Yes, what you say is quite right. This little affair of ours concerns our two selves only.” She gave him her hand and he put it to his lips, but she could not help noticing that his eyes were fixed musingly upon a promising gooseberry bush. She wondered if he was considering how he was to break the news to his mother; or was he wondering how she was to break the news to her father? Either the one problem or the other would, she knew, entail a fair amount of musing. And that was why she sent him away--it was actually approaching noon, so quickly does a day pass when lovers who have recognized each other as such for the first time come together. They had not stirred from the apple orchard. When they had left the house immediately after breakfast there had been some talk between them about the great dairy; he avowed himself to be dying to see the dairy and she had promised to make him acquainted with all the details of it’s working. But they had not stirred from the orchard. She sat among the apple blossoms; all the world before their eyes was filled with apple blossoms; apple blossoms were trembling in the air between their eyes and the blue sky, and with every gracious breath that came among the overhanging boughs a snow of apple blossoms fluttered to their feet.