The Two-Bar Brand - Chapter 17 Concerning Marriage

And it was spring-time; these prisoners of frost were beautifully
sensitive. They, too, with the lake and the aspens and the earth, the
seeds and the beasts, had suffered the season of interment. In such
fashion Nature makes possible the fresh undertakings of last summer's
reckless prodigals; she drives them into her mock tomb and freezes
their hearts--it is a little rest of death--so that they wake like
turbulent bacchantes drunk with sleep and with forgetfulness. Love,
spring says, is an eternal fact, welcome its new manifestations.
Remating bluebirds built their nests near Joan's window; they were not
troubled by sad recollections of last year's nests nor the young birds
that flew away. It was another life, a resurrection. If they remembered
at all, they remembered only the impulses of pleasure; they had
somewhere before learned how to love, how to build; the past summers
had given practice to their singing little throats and to their rapid
wings. No ghosts forbade happiness and no God--man-voiced--saying,
because he knew the ugly human aftermaths, hard sayings of "Be ye
perfect."

What counsel was theirs for Joan and what had her human mentor taught
her? He had taught her in one form or another the beauty of passion and
its eternal sinlessness, for that was his sincere belief. By music he
had taught her, by musical speech, by the preaching of heathen sage and
the wit of modern arguers. He had given her all the moral schooling she
had ever had and its golden rule was, "Be ye beautiful and generous."
Joan was both beautiful and made for giving, "free-hearted" as she
might herself have said, Friday's child as the old rhyme has it,--and
to cry out to her with love, saying, "I want you, Joan," was just,
sooner or later, to see her turn and bend her head and hold out her
arms. Prosper had the reward of patience; his wild leopardess was tamed
to his hand and her sweetness made him tender and very merciful.