e terror!--the little wrinkles and the thumb!
Only it ought to hold all the others together--in a slightly disturbing
squeeze....Like Rodin's great Hand--you know the thing!"

IV

I forget how many days intervened between that last breaking off of our
engagement and Marion's surrender. But I recall now the sharpness of my
emotion, the concentrated spirit of tears and laughter in my throat as
I read the words of her unexpected letter--"I have thought over
everything, and I was selfish...." I rushed off to Walham Green that
evening to give back all she had given me, to beat her altogether
at giving. She was extraordinarily gentle and generous that time, I
remember, and when at last I left her, she kissed me very sweetly.

So we were married.

We were married with all the customary incongruity. I gave--perhaps
after a while not altogether ungrudgingly--and what I gave, Marion took,
with a manifest satisfaction. After all, I was being sensible. So that
we had three livery carriages to the church (one of the pairs of horses
matched) and coachmen--with improvised flavour and very shabby silk
hats--bearing white favours on their whips, and my uncle intervened with
splendour and insisted upon having a wedding breakfast sent in from
a caterer's in Hammersmith. The table had a great display of
chrysanthemums, and there was orange blossom in the significant place
and a wonderful cake. We also circulated upwards of a score of wedges
of that accompanied by silver-printed cards in which Marion's name of
Ramboat was stricken out by an arrow in favour of Ponderevo. We had a
little rally of Marion's relations, and several friends and friends'
friends from Smithie's appeared in the church and drifted vestry-ward.
I produced my aunt and uncle a select group of two. The effect in that
shabby little house was one of exhilarating congestion. The side-board,
in which lived the table-cloth and the "Apartments" card, was used for
a display of the presents, eked out by the unused balance of the
silver-printed cards.

Marion wore the white raiment of a bride, white silk and satin, that did
not suit her, that made her seem large and strange to me; she obtruded
bows and unfamiliar contours. She went through all this strange ritual
of an English wedding with a sacramental gravity that I was altogether
too young and egotistical to comprehend. It was all extraordinarily
central and important to her; it was no more than an offensive,
complicated,