I Forbid the Banns! — page 123: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ON ‘THE TEMPTATION OF FAUST. 113 to her the words that she had spoken to him, he would be regarded as one of the greatest scoundrels in existence. And yet he knew that the girl was the sweetest and most pure-minded that had ever worn the grace of girlhood. Every word that she had said was true—that was the worst of the matter. When people love each other truly they are bound together by the real bond of marriage. The appearance of a man and a woman before a priest or a registrar does not make the rite sacred. It is merely a form, this ceremony of marriage; but, unfortunately, the people of every civilized country have come to regard it as the seal of respectability. Lovers, let them love never so well, could not, he was well aware, create a home unless they had gone through the ceremony of marriage. But a man and woman, even though they detested one another as heartily as husband and wife ever did, were regarded as respectable, and, con- sequently, commendable, provided they had been pro- nounced man and wife by the priest or the registrar, even though the priest’s intellectual and spiritual services were appraised at so humble a figure as £120 per annum, and even though the registrar’s intellectual labors were thought to be fully remunerated by the trifling ad cap. payment of half a crown. What he had said to Bertha was perfectly true: he had never given the marriage question any particular thought. It had certainly never occurred to him to consider it from the elevated standpoint of spirituality. It was all very well to talk about the union of souls being the true foundation of marriage ; and it was doubtless a fact that the union between himself and Bertha could not be made more com- plete if the marriage service were read before them in due form by the archbishops of Canterbury and York, with the Episcopal Bench forming a cordon round the altar while the ceremony was being performed. But then all couples conniclooolks (E(0)