y straightforward and intensely sincere, he
came through the ordeal well, without being obliged to disclose what he
preferred to keep secret. The minister, satisfied, at length called in
the town clerk by telephone; who issued the license, pocketed his fee,
and, in company with the minister's wife, acted as witness....

Whitaker found himself on his feet beside Mary Ladislas. They were being
married. He was shaken by a profound amazement. The incredible was
happening--with his assistance. He heard his voice uttering responses;
it seemed something as foreign to him as the voice of the girl at his
side. He wondered stupidly at her calm--and later, at his own. It was
all preposterously matter-of-fact and, at the same time, stupidly
romantic. He divined obscurely that this thing was happening in
obedience to forces nameless and unknown to them, strange and terrific
forces that worked mysteriously beyond their mortal ken. He seemed to
hear the droning of the loom of the Fates....

And they were man and wife. The door had closed, the gate-latch clicked
behind them. They were walking quietly side by side through the scented
night, they whom God had joined together.

Man and wife! Bride and groom, already started on the strangest,
shortest of wedding journeys--from the parsonage to the railroad
station!

Neither found anything to say. They walked on, heels in unison pounding
the wet flagstones. The night was sweet with the scent of wet grass and
shrubbery. The sidewalks were boldly patterned with a stencilling of
black leaves and a milky dappling of electric light. At every corner
high-swung arcs shot vivid slants of silver-blue radiance through the
black and green of trees.

These things all printed themselves indelibly upon the tablets of his
memory....

They arrived at the station. Whitaker bought his wife a ticket to New
York and secured for her solitary use a drawing-room in the sleeper.
When that was accomplished, they had still a good part of an hour to
wait. They found a bench on the station platform, and sat down. Whitaker
possessed himself of his wife's hand-bag long enough to furnish it with
a sum of money and an old envelope bearing the name and address of his
law partner. He explained that he would write to Drummond, who would see
to her welfare as far as she would permit--issue her an adequate monthly
allowance and advise her when she should have become her own mistress
once more: in a word, a widow.

She