rked for him the passing of the line which divides the World
of the Flesh from the World of the Spirit--the frontier of the kingdom
of this world separating it from that other Kingdom which, though
worldwide, yet owns but a single Lord--seemed to fall with greater
weight into Vane's soul than any others of the service. As he heard them
he raised his bent head, threw it back and, with wide open eyes, looked
up over the Bishop's head and the reredos behind the altar to the
central section of the great stained glass window containing the figure
of the Godhead crucified in the flesh, with the two Marys, Mary the
Mother and Mary Magdalene, kneeling at the foot of the Cross.

Like a quiver of summer lightning across the horizon of an August sky,
there came to him the thought of that mother of his whom he had never
known, and of that girl who was almost his sister, long ago lost in the
great wilderness of London. They were not likenesses, only the faintest
of suggestions, and yet the mere recollection seemed to lend an added
solemnity to the vows which he was about to take.

"I will do so, the Lord being my helper!"

As he uttered the words there was not the faintest doubt in his soul
that for the rest of his life he would be able to keep both the letter
and the spirit of the oath unbroken to the end of his days. Many a man
and woman has rashly wished that it were possible to look into the
future. Such a thought had more than once crossed Vane Maxwell's mind,
but could he, in that solemn moment, have looked into the future and
seen what lay before him, he would have been well content with the high
destiny to which his great renunciation was to lead him.

* * * * *

And now the scene changes from Gloucester Cathedral, to St. George's,
Hanover Square.

It was the smartest wedding of the year, and, apart from all its social
brilliance, even the most rigid critics admitted that London had not
seen a lovelier bride or a handsomer bridegroom than Enid Raleigh and
Reginald Garthorne. The church was thronged by an audience made up of
the friendly, the sympathetic, the sentimental, and the merely curious,
as is usual on such occasions.

Carol Vane and Dora Russel, who had come provided with tickets
indirectly supplied by the bridegroom himself, occupied seats in the
left-hand gallery at the front. In consequence of the crowd, they only
got into their places just as the bridal procession was mo