g, spraying the hushed air with sweetness. They saw
clergymen and a bishop, and the splendor of stained glass through which
ushers tiptoed. And they heard the subdued rustling of skirts and the
silken stir, and the great organ breathing over Eden, and a single
artistically-modulated sob from the poet. A good many other things they
heard and saw, especially those of the two clans who were bidden to the
breakfast at Wayne's big and splendid house on the southwest corner of
Seventy-ninth Street and Madison Avenue.

For here they were piped to breakfast by the boatswain of Wayne's big
seagoing yacht, the _Thendara_--on which brides and grooms were
presently to embark for Cairo via the Azores--and speeches were said and
tears shed into goblets glimmering with vintages worth prayerful
consideration.

And in due time two broughams, drawn by dancing horses, with the azure
ribbons aflutter from the head-stalls, bore away two very beautiful and
excited brides and two determined, but entirely rattled, grooms. And
after that several relays of parents fraternized with the poet and six
daughters, and the clans of Briggs and of Wayne said a number of
agreeable things to anybody who cared to listen; and as everybody did
listen, there was a great deal of talk--more talk in a minute than the
sisters of Iole had heard in all their several limited and innocently
natural existences. So it confused them, not with its quality, but its
profusion; and the champagne made their cheeks feel as though the soft
peachy skin fitted too tight, and a number of persistent musical
instruments were being tuned in their little ears; and, not yet
thoroughly habituated to any garments except pink sunbonnets and
pajamas, their straight fronts felt too tight, and the tops of their
stockings pulled, and they balanced badly on their high heels, and
Aphrodite and Cybele, being too snugly laced, retired to rid themselves
of their first corsets.

The remaining four, Lissa, now eighteen; Dione, fifteen; Philodice,
fourteen, and Chlorippe, thirteen, found the missing Pleiads in the
great library, joyously donning their rose-silk lounging pajamas, while
two parlor maids brought ices from the wrecked feast below.

So they, too, flung from them crinkling silk and diaphanous lace,
high-heel shoon and the delicate body-harness never fashioned for
free-limbed dryads of the Rose-Cross wilds; and they kept the electric
signals going for ices and fruits and pitchers brimmi