quietly here for a bit. I must go back and see
that Danvers signs his name all right. But I'll come and fetch you
afterwards."

He departed, and Ruth suddenly realised an urgent need for solitude. She
turned to her cousin.

"Do please go! I shall be all right. It is cool and shady here. And they
will be looking for you in the vestry. Please go! I will wait till--Tots
comes back."

Her cousin demurred a little, but it was obvious that her inclination
fell in with Ruth's request, and it was also quite obvious that Ruth did
not want her. So, after some persuasion, she yielded and went.

During the interval that followed, Ruth sat in the quiet corner just out
of sight of the vestry door, bracing herself to meet Tots and implore
him to set her free. It was a bad quarter of an hour for her, and when,
at the end of it, Tots came, she looked on the verge of fainting again.

"Sorry I couldn't come before," said Tots. "But my responsibilities are
over now, thank the gods. I suppose, now, you didn't have time for
anything to eat before you came?"

This was the actual truth. Ruth owned it with a feeling of guilt. And
suddenly she found that she could not speak then. There was something
that made it impossible. Perhaps it was the loud clash of the bells
overhead.

"I am very sorry," she said again.

Tots smiled.

"You must manage better at our own weddin'," he said. "There's nothin'
like fortifyin' yourself with a good substantial meal for an ordeal of
this sort. You're feelin' better, eh? Take my arm."

She obeyed him, still quivering with her fruitless effort to tell him of
the miserable deception she had unintentionally practised upon him. She
had a feeling that, if she made him angry, the world itself would stop.
Surely no one had ever found Tots formidable before.

At the touch of his hand upon hers, she started.

"What's wrong with it?" queried Tots softly. "Doesn't it fit?"

She glanced up in confusion. She was trembling so that she could
scarcely stand. He slipped his arm about her reassuringly, comfortably.

"Never mind. We must look at it together. I'll take it back if it isn't
right. We'll go through the church, shall we? It's the shortest way."

He led her, unresisting, back into the building, and the clamour of the
bells merged into the swelling chords of the organ. As they walked side
by side down the empty aisle the strains of Mendelssohn's Wedding March
transformed their progress into a triumphant