the isle to the chancel railing where she
had knelt at confirmation, where bridal couples knelt in receiving
the benediction, Isabel felt that this new Care faced her from
there as from its appointed shrine; she even fancied that in effect
it addressed to her a solemn warning:

"Isabel, think not to escape me in this place! It is here that
Rowan must seem to you most unworthy and most false; to have
wronged you most cruelly. For it was here, at this altar, that you
had expected to kneel beside him and be blessed in your marriage.
In years to come, sitting where you now sit, you may live to see
him kneel here with another, making her his wife. But for you,
Isabel, this spot must ever mean the renunciation of marriage, the
bier of love. Then do not think to escape me here, me, who am
Remembrance."

And Isabel, as though a command had been laid upon her, with her
eyes fixed on the altar over which the lights of the stained glass
windows were joyously playing, gave herself up to memories of all
the innocent years that she had known Rowan and of the blind years
that she had loved him.

She was not herself aware that marriage was the only sacrament of
religion that had ever possessed interest for her. Recollection
told her no story of how even as a child she had liked to go to the
crowded church with other children and watch the procession of the
brides--all mysterious under their white veils, and following one
and another so closely during springs and autumns that in truth
they were almost a procession. Or with what excitement she had
watched each walk out, leaning on the arm of the man she had chosen
and henceforth to be called his in ail things to the end while the
loud crash of the wedding march closed their separate pasts with a
single melody.

But there were mothers in the church who, attracted by the child's
expression, would say to each other a little sadly perhaps, that
love and marriage were destined to be the one overshadowing or
overshining experience in life to this most human and poetic soul.

After she had learned of Rowan's love for her and had begun to
return his love, the altar had thenceforth become the more personal
symbol of their destined happiness. Every marriage that she
witnessed bound her more sacredly to him. Only a few months before
this, at the wedding of the Osborns--Kate being her closest friend,
and George Osborn being Rowan's--he and she had been the only
attendants; and she k