seemed to her. It did
not seem as if she were being married at all. It all seemed to concern
somebody else. When it came to the putting on of the wedding-ring, she
found herself, very naturally, guiding Allan's relaxed fingers to hold
it in its successive places, and finally slip it on the wedding-finger.
And somehow having to do that checked the chilly awe she had had before
of Allan Harrington. It made her feel quite simply sorry for him, as if
he were one of her poor little boys in trouble. And when it was all over
she bent pitifully before she thought, and kissed one white, cold cheek.
He seemed so tragically helpless, yet more alive, in some way, since she
had touched his hand to guide it. Then, as her lips brushed his cheek,
she recoiled and colored a little. She had felt that slight roughness
which a man's cheek, however close-shaven, always has--the _man_-feel.
It made her realize unreasonably that it was a man she had married,
after all, not a stone image nor a sick child--a live man! With the
thought, or rather instinct, came a swift terror of what she had done,
and a swift impulse to rise. She was half-way risen from her knees when
a hand on her shoulder, and the clergyman's voice in her ear, checked
her.

"Not yet," he murmured almost inaudibly. "Stay as you are till--till
Mrs. Harrington is wheeled from the room."

Phyllis understood. She remained as she was, her body a shield before
Allan Harrington's eyes, her hand just withdrawing from his shoulder,
till she heard the closing of the door, and a sigh as of relaxed tension
from the three people around her. Then she rose. Allan lay still with
closed eyelids. It seemed to her that he had flushed, if ever so
faintly, at the touch of her lips on his cheek. She laid his hand on the
coverlet with her own roughened, ringed one, and followed the others
out, into the room where the dead woman had been taken, leaving him with
his attendant.

The rest of the evening Phyllis went about in a queer-keyed, almost
light-hearted frame of mind. It was only the reaction from the
long-expected terror that was over now, but it felt indecorous. It was
just as well, however. Some one's head had to be kept. The servants were
upset, of course, and there were many arrangements to be made. She and
Mr. De Guenther worked steadily together, telephoning, ordering,
guiding, straightening out all the tangles. There never was a wedding,
she thought, where the bride did so much of the