This sacrament of souls was too solemn for words or kisses.

When they spoke again it was of commonplace things.
It was hard for her to leave the little low-browed house, the next morning.

John stopped to gather a bunch of prairie roses from the bush which they had trained beneath the study window, and Helen fastened them in her dress; then, just as they were ready to start, the preacher's wife ran back to the study, and hurriedly put one of the roses from her bosom into a vase on the writing-table, and stooped and gave a quick, furtive kiss to the chair in which John always sat when at work on a sermon.
They neither of them spoke as they walked to the station, and no one spoke to them.

Helen knew there were shy looks from curtained windows and peeping from behind doors, for she was a moral curiosity in Lockhaven; but no one interrupted them.

Just before she started, John took her hand, and held it in a nervous grasp.