Valancy's lack of concern for the past and future extends to her relationship with Barney; she loves him without reservation and without concerning herself with the parts of his life that he keeps closed off to her. She doesn't ask about what he does in the locked room in their cabin to which he disappears for some hours every day. She also doesn't question him when he goes away for a few days without explanation- just welcomes him back eagerly when he returns. As with the rest of her new life, Valancy is grateful for every day she has with Barney and doesn't intend to waste a moment worrying about the aspects of his life that she's not party to.
The domesticated life seems to be growing on Barney despite his secrecy in some matters, and not just because he's now getting three square meals a day. He clearly enjoys sharing his woodland treks with Valancy- seeing the beauty of the wilderness afresh through her delighted eyes. They also become good friends in their months together, able to talk for hours or sit in companionable silence as the mood strikes them. Barney is also openly affectionate, and pays Valancy sincere compliments which she, after a lifetime of insults and mockery, soaks up happily. Though not reciprocating Valancy's unreserved love, he obviously has become very fond of her and the life they've made together, something he seems to realise himself when he returns from his mysterious trip away:
Once he went away and stayed away two days and nights. He had asked Valancy if she would be afraid to stay alone and she had said she would not. He never told her where he had been. She was not afraid to be alone, but she was horribly lonely. The sweetest sound she had ever heard was Lady Jane's clatter through the woods when Barney returned. And then his signal whistle from the shore. She ran down to the landing rock to greet him--to nestle herself into his eager arms--they did seem eager.
"Have you missed me, Moonlight?" Barney was whispering.
"It seems a hundred years since you went away," said Valancy.
"I won't leave you again."
"You must," protested Valancy, "if you want to. I'd be miserable if I thought you wanted to go and didn't, because of me. I want you to feel perfectly free."
Barney laughed--a little cynically.
"There is no such thing as freedom on earth," he said. "Only different kinds of bondages. And comparative bondages. You think you are free now because you've escaped from a peculiarly unbearable kind of bondage. But are you? You love me--that's a bondage."
"Who said or wrote that 'the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is'?" asked Valancy dreamily, clinging to his arm as they climbed up the rock steps.
"Ah, now you have it," said Barney. "That's all the freedom we can hope for--the freedom to choose our prison. But, Moonlight,"--he stopped at the door of the Blue Castle and looked about him--at the glorious lake, the great, shadowy woods, the bonfires, the twinkling lights--"Moonlight, I'm glad to be home again. When I came down through the woods and saw my home lights--mine--gleaming out under the old pines--something I'd never seen before--oh, girl, I was glad--glad!"
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.