accustomed to get married every day of his life. Driving from church to
reception with Barbara, I railed, in the orthodox manner of the superior
husband, at the modern wedding.

"A survival of barbarism," said I. "What is the veil but a relic of
marriage by barter, when the man bought a pig in a poke and never knew
his luck till he unveiled his bride? What is the ring but the symbol of
the fetters of slavery? The rice, but the expression of a hope for a
prolific union? The satin slipper tied on to the carriage or thrown
after it? Good luck? No such thing. It was once part of the marriage
ceremony for the bridegroom to tap the wife with a shoe to symbolise
his assertion of and her acquiescence in her entire subjection."

"Where did Lady Bagshawe get that awful hat?" said Barbara sweetly. "Did
you notice it? It isn't a hat; it's a crime."

I turned on her severely. "What has Lady Bagshawe's hat to do with the
subject under discussion? Haven't you been listening?"

She squeezed my hand and laughed. "No, you dear silly, of course not."

Another instance of the essential inconvincibility of woman.

It was Jaffery Chayne, who, on the pavement before the house in Park
Crescent, threw the satin slipper at the departing carriage. He had been
very hearty and booming all the time, the human presentment of a
devil-may-care lion out for a jaunt, and his great laugh thundering
cheerily above the clatter of talk had infected the heterogeneous
gathering. Unconsciously dull eyes sparkled and pursy lips vibrated into
smiles. So gay a wedding reception I have never attended, and I am sure
it was nothing but Jaffery's pervasive influence that infused vitality
into the deadly and decorous mob. It was a miracle wrought by a rich
Silenic personality. I had never guessed before the magnetic power of
Jaffery Chayne. Indeed I had often wondered how the overgrown and
apparently irresponsible schoolboy who couldn't make head or tail of
Nietzsche and from whom the music of Shelley was hid, had managed to
make a journalistic reputation as a great war and foreign correspondent.
Now the veil of the mystery was drawn an inch or two aside. I saw him
mingle with an alien crowd, and, by what On the surface appeared to be
sheer brute full-bloodedness, compel them to his will. The wedding was
not to be a hollow clang of bells but a glad fanfare of trumpets in all
hearts. In order that this wedding of Adrian and Doria should be
memorable he had instin