"
If it had been in her power to leave me, if one-half of the promised
period had not been yet to run, she might have enforced her purpose in
despite of all that I could urge;--of reason, of entreaty, of the
pleadings of a love in this at least as earnest as her own. Nay, she
would probably have left me, in the hope of exhibiting to the world
the appearance of an open quarrel, but for a peculiarity of Martial
law. That law enforces, on the plea of either party, "specific
performance" of the marriage contract. I could reclaim her, and call
the force of the State to recover her. When even this warning at first
failed to enforce her submission, I swore by all I held sacred in my
own world and all she revered in hers--by the symbols never lightly
invoked, and never, in the course of ages that cover thrice the span
of Terrestrial history and tradition, invoked to sanction a lie;
symbols more sacred in her eyes than, in those of mediaeval
Christendom, the gathered relics that appalled the heroic soul of
Harold Godwinsson--that she should only defeat her own purpose; that I
would reclaim my wife before the Order and before the law, thus
asserting more clearly than ever the strength of the tie that bound me
to her and to her house.
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