enty years, they had been meeting life together, and
comparing notes upon the impressions they had gained. Often and often,
each one had found the other's notes a cipher, had lacked the cipher's
proper code. Nevertheless, there had been a certain sense of intimacy
in the mere fact of the comparison. Without Catia in his past, Scott
Brenton would have been lonely. Therefore he felt it safe to reason
that, without her in his future, the loneliness would become infinitely
worse. The marriage, in its inception, might have been altogether
Catia's doing. In the end, he had been giving it his full assent, and
he took his marriage vows in all sincerity, determined to do his best
towards their fulfilment.

His fingers shut quite closely, then, upon the slippery handle of
Catia's new bag, and he stepped a bit nearer to her side, as they
halted beneath the shining stars, to look back upon what they left
behind them. Catia saw the huddled gathering of the village people,
already looking a little dowdy to her critical eyes. Scott only saw
four faces, grouped in perspective: his mother, tearful, a little
tremulous, yet radiant in her full content; behind her, two of the
visiting clergy, classmates and chums of the divinity school, and,
still behind these two, the eager young face of the curly-headed rector
of the many hyphens, the man who first had opened his eyes to a
brand-new gospel, one of fatherly affection, not of pursuant wrath, a
gospel elastic as the mind of man, plastic as the flowing life of all
the ages, not a hard and fast affair whose boundaries were laid down
for all time, hundreds of years before. And this was the man of them
all, and not the broadcloth village parson, whom Scott Brenton had
chosen to pronounce himself and Catia man and wife.

Why not?

Scott waved his hand. His mother sought her handkerchief, though not to
wave it. His two classmates saluted him, the one with Catia's big
bouquet, the other with a crochetted "throw" snatched from the nearest
chair. Above them all, though, the curly-headed rector flung up his arm
in greeting, and with his arm his voice.

"Bless you, old man, and keep at it! Remember I'm always in the same
old corner, if you ever need me."

And Scott Brenton took the assurance with him, as he entered into his
new life.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"Scott," Catia let go the coffee pot and looked up to face him; "I do
wish you'd begin to think about smartening yourself up a little."