you shall be Gerda Bendish anywhere you
like, only not on cheques, if you don't mind."

"And I don't much want to wear a wedding ring, Barry."

"That's as you like, too, of course. You might keep it in your purse when
travelling, to produce if censorious hotel keepers look askance at us.
Even the most abandoned ladies do that sometimes, I believe. Or your
marriage lines will do as well.... Gerda, you blessed darling, it's most
frightfully decent and sporting of you to have changed your mind and
owned up. Next time we differ I'll try and be the one to do it, I
honestly will.... I say, let's come out by ourselves and dine and do a
theatre, to celebrate the occasion."

So they celebrated the triumph of institutionalism.

3

Their life together, thought Barry, would be a keen, jolly, adventuring
business, an ardent thing, full of gallant dreams and endeavours. It
should never grow tame or stale or placid, never lose its fine edge.
There would be mountain peak beyond mountain peak to scale together. They
would be co-workers, playmates, friends and lovers all at once, and they
would walk in liberty as in a bourgeois dream.

So planned Barry Briscoe, the romantic, about whose head the vision
splendid always hovered, a realisable, capturable thing.

Gerda thought, "I'm happy. Poetry and drawing and Barry. I've everything
I want, except a St. Bernard pup, and Kay's giving me that for Christmas.
_I'm happy._"

It was a tingling, intense, sensuous feeling, like stretching warm before
a good fire, or lying in fragrant thymy woods in June, in the old Junes
when suns were hot. Life was a song and a dream and a summer morning.

"You're happy, Gerda," Neville said to her once, gladly but half
wistfully, and she nodded, with her small gleaming smile.

"Go on being happy," Neville told her, and Gerda did not know that she
had nearly added "for it's cost rather a lot, your happiness." Gerda
seldom cared how much things had cost; she did not waste thought on such
matters. She was happy.

CHAPTER XV

THE DREAM

1

Barry and Gerda were married in January in a registry office, and, as all
concerned disliked wedding parties, there was no wedding party.

After they had gone, Neville, recovered now from the lilies and languors
of illness, plunged into the roses and raptures of social life. One
mightn't, she said to herself, be able to accomplish much in this world,
or imprint one's personality on one's environment b