I Forbid the Banns! — page 246: what you’re looking at

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

236 “7 FORBID THE BANNS!” “My dear, Marian Travers knows what suits herself. 1 feel at this moment that she had reasons of her own for forcing you into a corner: I fancied that I saw more than a suspicion of malice in her expression when we were parting from her a few evenings ago.” ‘Why should she bear us any malice?” ‘Who can tell what she may account as a sufficient rea- son? Never mind. We are independent of all such people. You and I, dearest, can live for one another.”’ ‘“ You are not sorry, Julian, that you have accepted my principles ?”’ said Bertha after a pause. ‘My dearest,” said he, taking her hand and looking very tenderly into her face, ‘‘I made up my mind I could not live without you. You may rest perfectly assured that I shall never even think of reproaching you for anything. We stand together, Bertha, in this business. I agree with all that you have said regarding the union of love and the shackles of marriage, even though we should be cut off from society.” “And you think that we shall be isolated—boycotted by all your friends here ?”’ “JT am sure of it. But what does it matter to us, Bertha? Think of the amount of money we have between us. That renders us independent of the narrow-minded county circle. Wecan live anywhere we choose.” “The people in London are surely above all narrow- minded prejudices.” “They are. You might depend on making a success in London. ‘They are constantly on the lookout for a noy- eltyin London. The inventor of a new religion is the hero of the hour. Atheism was the cult a few years ago. It is now an indication of old fogyism to mention the word. Avowed atheism will never put anyone into parliament again. Agnosticism has had its turn. Then came spirit- ualism, then theosophy. Meanwhile the day of what idiots C@NMNIELOOKS (€(0)