a situation in which her instinct had whispered just once--there must
be some hidden danger: but the electric touch of his hand destroyed the
process, and made her incapable of reason.

"What should we gain by a week's or a fortnight's delay," he was saying,
"except so much misery?"

She looked around the hotel sitting-room, and tried to imagine the
desolation of it, stripped of his presence. Why not? There was reason
in what he said. And yet, if she had known it, it was not to reason she
yielded, but to the touch of his hand.

"We will be married to-day," he decreed. "I have planned it all. I have
bought the 'Adhemar', the yacht which I chartered last winter. She is
here. We'll go off on her together, away from the world, for as long
as you like. And then," he ended triumphantly, "then we'll go back to
Grenoble and begin our life."

"And begin our life!" she repeated. But it was not to him that she
spoke. "Hugh, I positively have to have some clothes."

"Clothes!" His voice expressed his contempt for the mundane thought.

"Yes, clothes," she repeated resolutely.

He looked at his watch once more.

"Very well," he said, "we'll get 'em on the way."

"On the way?" she asked.

"We'll have to have a marriage license, I'm afraid," he explained
apologetically.

Honora grew crimson. A marriage license!

She yielded, of course. Who could resist him? Nor need the details of
that interminable journey down the crowded artery of Broadway to the
Centre of Things be entered into. An ignoble errand, Honora thought; and
she sat very still, with flushed cheeks, in the corner of the carriage.
Chiltern's finer feelings came to her rescue. He, too, resented this
senseless demand of civilization as an indignity to their Olympian
loves. And he was a man to chafe at all restraints. But at last the
odious thing was over, grim and implacable Law satisfied after he had
compelled them to stand in line for an interminable period before his
grill, and mingle with those whom he chose, in his ignorance, to call
their peers. Honora felt degraded as they emerged with the hateful
paper, bought at such a price. The City Hall Park, with its moving
streams of people, etched itself in her memory.

"Leave me, Hugh," she said; "I will take this carriage--you must get
another one."

For once, he accepted his dismissal with comparative meekness.

"When shall I come?" he asked.

"She smiled a little, in spite of herself.

"You may come fo