ngs. I seem to
remember a refrain of my own: "A marriage is too sacred a thing, too
private a thing, for this display. Her father came in and stood behind
me against the wall, and her aunt appeared beside the sideboard and
stood with arms, looking from speaker to speaker, a sternly gratified
prophetess. It didn't occur to me then! How painful it was to Marion for
these people to witness my rebellion.

"But, George," said her father, "what sort of marriage do you want? You
don't want to go to one of those there registry offices?"

"That's exactly what I'd like to do. Marriage is too private a thing--"

"I shouldn't feel married," said Mrs. Ramboat.

"Look here, Marion," I said; "we are going to be married at a registry
office. I don't believe in all these fripperies and superstitions, and I
won't submit to them. I've agreed to all sorts of things to please you."

"What's he agreed to?" said her father--unheeded.

"I can't marry at a registry office," said Marion, sallow-white.

"Very well," I said. "I'll marry nowhere else."

"I can't marry at a registry office."

"Very well," I said, standing up, white and tense and it amazed me, but
I was also exultant; "then we won't marry at all."

She leant forward over the table, staring blankly. But presently her
half-averted face began to haunt me as she had sat at the table, and her
arm and the long droop of her shoulder.

III

The next day I did an unexampled thing. I sent a telegram to my uncle,
"Bad temper not coming to business," and set off for Highgate and Ewart.
He was actually at work--on a bust of Millie, and seemed very glad for
any interruption.

"Ewart, you old Fool," I said, "knock off and come for a day's gossip.
I'm rotten. There's a sympathetic sort of lunacy about you. Let's go to
Staines and paddle up to Windsor."

"Girl?" said Ewart, putting down a chisel.

"Yes."

That was all I told him of my affair.

"I've got no money," he remarked, to clear up ambiguity in my
invitation.

We got a jar of shandy-gaff, some food, and, on Ewart's suggestion,
two Japanese sunshades in Staines; we demanded extra cushions at the
boathouse and we spent an enormously soothing day in discourse and
meditation, our boat moored in a shady place this side of Windsor.
I seem to remember Ewart with a cushion forward, only his heels and
sunshade and some black ends of hair showing, a voice and no more,
against the shining, smoothly-streaming mirror of the trees and