t you like, but what _did_ you expect me to do? It was
necessary to bring home to some people that this is the twentieth
century, not the nineteenth, and I think I've done it. And anyway what
are you going to do about it? Did you seriously suppose that I--_I_--was
going through all the orange-blossom rigmarole, voice that breathed o'er
Eden, fully choral, red carpet on the pavement, flowers, photographers,
vicar, vestry, _Daily Picture_, reception, congratulations, rice, old
shoes, going-away dress, 'Be kind to her, Ozzie.' Not much! And I don't
think. They say that girls love it and insist on it. Well, I don't, and
I know some others who don't, too. I think it's simply barbaric, worse
than a public funeral. Why, to my mind it's Central African; and that's
all there is to it. So there!" She laughed.

"Well," said Mr. Prohaek, holding his hat in his hand. "I'm a tolerably
two-faced person myself, but for sheer heartless duplicity I give you
the palm. You can beat me. Has it occurred to you that this dodge of
yours will cost you about fifty per cent of the wedding presents you
might otherwise have had?"

"It has," said Sissie. "That was one reason why we tried the dodge.
Nothing is more horrible than about fifty per cent of the wedding
presents that brides get in these days. And we've had the two finest
presents anybody could wish for."

"Oh?"

"Yes, Ozzie gave me Ozzie, and I gave him me."

"I suppose the idea was yours?"

"Of course. Didn't I tell you yesterday that Ozzie's only function at my
wedding was to be indispensable. He was very much afraid at first when I
started on the scheme, but he soon warmed up to it. I'll give him credit
for seeing that secrecy was the only thing. If we'd announced it
beforehand, we should have been bound to be beaten. You see that
yourself, don't you, dearest? And after all, it's our affair and nobody
else's."

"That's just where you're wrong," said Mr. Prohack grandly. "A marriage,
even yours, is an affair of the State's. It concerns society. It is full
of reactions on society. And society has been very wise to invest it
with solemnity--and a certain grotesque quality. All solemnities are a
bit grotesque, and so they ought to be. All solemnities ought to produce
self-consciousness in the performers. As things are, you'll be ten years
in convincing yourself that you're really a married woman, and till the
day of your death, and afterwards, society will have an instinctive
feeli