was late; and for
five immeasurable minutes Lethbury and Jane faced a churchful of
conjecture. Then the bridegroom appeared, flushed but chivalrous, and
explaining to his father-in-law under cover of the ritual that he had
torn his glove and had to go back for another.

"You'll be losing the ring next," muttered Lethbury; but Mr. Budd
produced this article punctually, and a moment or two later was bearing
its wearer captive down the aisle.

At the wedding-breakfast Lethbury caught his wife's eye fixed on him in
mild disapproval, and understood that his hilarity was exceeding the
bounds of fitness. He pulled himself together, and tried to subdue his
tone; but his jubilation bubbled over like a champagne-glass
perpetually refilled. The deeper his draughts, the higher it rose.

It was at the brim when, in the wake of the dispersing guests, Jane
came down in her travelling-dress and fell on her mother's neck.

"I can't leave you!" she wailed, and Lethbury felt as suddenly sobered
as a man under a douche. But if the bride was reluctant her captor was
relentless. Never had Mr. Budd been more dominant, more aquiline.
Lethbury's last fears were dissipated as the young man snatched Jane
from her mother's bosom and bore her off to the brougham.

The brougham rolled away, the last milliner's girl forsook her post by
the awning, the red carpet was folded up, and the house door closed.
Lethbury stood alone in the hall with his wife. As he turned toward
her, he noticed the look of tired heroism in her eyes, the deepened
lines of her face. They reflected his own symptoms too accurately not
to appeal to him. The nervous tension had been horrible. He went up to
her, and an answering impulse made her lay a hand on his arm. He held
it there a moment.

"Let us go off and have a jolly little dinner at a restaurant," he
proposed.

There had been a time when such a suggestion would have surprised her
to the verge of disapproval; but now she agreed to it at once.

"Oh, that would be so nice," she murmured with a great sigh of relief
and assuagement.

Jane had fulfilled her mission after all: she had drawn them together
at last.

THE RECKONING

I

"THE marriage law of the new dispensation will be: _Thou shalt not be
unfaithful--to thyself_."

A discreet murmur of approval filled the studio, and through the haze
of cigarette smoke Mrs. Clement Westall, as her husband descended from
his improvised platform, saw him merge