Letitia Berkeley, A.M.; A Novel (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII CONSCIENCE VERSUS LOVE Letitia and Doctor Trux established themselves in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, for the twenty-one days' residence in London necessary to obtain a special licence to marry: she in a boarding house, he in lodgings near by. The arrangement was his, and in talking it over in the compartment they had secured to themselves coming up from Dover, he said: "Of course it would be pleasanter to take lodgings together where we could have a sitting-room and things generally to ourselves. But it might be misconstrued, and--Caesar's wife must be above suspicion." "What do you mean?" she exclaimed, drawing her hand from his, and moving away from him to the farther end of the opposite seat. He followed hastily, surprised at her outburst: "Dearest, why should you be offended? I only meant that were we to take up our abode together before we are married, others might say what would 17 57 not, what could not, be true. I did not for a moment mean that it might be true, my proud Vestal." Letitia flushed deeply at the epithet, a sudden crimson gush of colour that made him add earnestly: "You said once that real love is pure. It is a great purifier too, and a great modifier. I have, of course, had my ideas about the relations of the sexes, about marriage; and they have differed more or less radically from the conventional views on those subjects. The ceremonies, for instance, with which society has gradually come to surround the simple act of union between man and woman, have always seemed to me to be superfluous when not actually absurd in their incongruous mingling of heathen symbolism and Christian sentiments. The real bond being the love, where it subsists between a twain there is marriage, where it does not there is no...