Then he told what had happened when the Blacktons went to town, and when he had finished, and rose despairingly beside the fire, Donald rose, too, and his voice boomed in a sort of ecstasy.
"My Jane would ha' done likewise," he cried in triumph.

"She would that, Johnny--she would!" "But this is different!" groaned Aldous.

"What am I going to do, Mac?
What can I do?
Don't you see how impossible it is! Mac, Mac--she isn't my wife--not entirely, not absolutely, not in the last and vital sense of being a wife by law! If she knew the truth, she wouldn't consider herself my wife; she would leave me.

For that reason I can't take her.

I can't.
Think what it would mean!" Old Donald had come close to his side, and at the look in the gray old mountaineer's face John Aldous paused.