"Not... ?"

"Yes, I will; if you'll ask me."

"You'll marry me?"

"Yes," she said, "rather than have everything end in absolute silliness, like this."

He looked at her, at her clasped hands and the frown of her great resolve. He perceived that he was worth something to her--that she was prepared to pay a price--the price he set--rather than lose him altogether. Her eyes met his with a mingling of courage and desperation, as of one who has chosen a difficult and dangerous path, one who makes a great sacrifice, leads a forlorn hope. And his eyes dwelt for a moment on hers, appreciatively, thoughtfully. And in that moment his resolve was taken.

"No," he said, "you didn't want to jump the wall without knowing what it would be like on the other side. I won't have an unwilling wife. On the other hand, I won't lose you now, Princess, for a thousand fathers and ten thousand aunts. Make up your mind to the mock marriage, and that shall be the way out."

"But I thought you said it was impossible."

"So it was. But it isn't now. I've been thinking."

She leaned back, turned toward him from the corner, and faced him with fearless eyes.

"What a nightmare of a day it's been," she said. "Aren't you glad we're awake again? When can I send the certificate?" she asked, eager and alert.

"At the earliest possible moment," said he. "I must see my friend about it at once. Would you mind waiting for me--say in St. Paul's? And then we'll end our day in the country, after all."

"You are good," she said, and laid her hand for a fleeting instant on his arm. "I do think it's good of you to give way about the mock marriage. You know I had really set my heart on it. Now everything will be plain sailing, won't it? And we'll go to Warwick the minute we're mock-married, because my putting my finger on it and Kenilworth ought to count, oughtn't it?"

"It shall," he said, gravely.

XII

WESTMINSTER

A WEDDING-DAY--even a real wedding-day--leaves at best but a vague and incoherent memory. To the bridegroom it is a confused whirling recollection of white satin and tears and smiles and flowers and music--or perhaps a dingy room with a long table and an uninterested registrar at the end of it.

Edward Basingstoke thought with regret of the flowers and the white satin. If he had accepted her submission, had consented to the real marriage, there should have been white roses by the hundred, and the softest lace and silk to set off her beauty. As it was--

"We shall have to go through some sort of form," he told her, "because of the clerks. If my friend were just to tear out a certificate and give it to us the people in the office... . You understand."

"Quite," she said.

"It'll be rather like a very dingy pretense at a marriage. You won't mind that?"

"Of course not. Why should I?"

"Then, if you're sure you really want to go through with it ... shall we go to my friend's now, and get it over?"

"He doesn't mind?"

"Not a bit."

"He must be a very accommodating friend."

"He is," said Edward.

"Where did you leave the luggage?" she asked, suddenly. They were walking along the Embankment.

"At Charing Cross."

"Well, I'm going to get it. And I shall go to the Charing Cross Hotel with it, and you can meet me in three hours."

"But that'll only just give us time," he said. "Why not come with me now?"

"Because," she said, firmly, "I won't play at mock marriages unless I like, and I won't play at all unless you let me do as I like first."

"Won't you tell me why?"

"I'll tell you when I meet you again."

"Where?" he asked. And she stopped at the statue of Forster in the Embankment Gardens, and answered:

"Here."

Then she smiled at him so kindly that he asked no more questions, but just said:

"In three hours, then," and they walked on together to Charing Cross.

And after three hours, in which he had time to be at least six different Edwards, he met, by the statue of the estimable Mr. Forster, a lady all in fine white linen, wearing a white hat with a wreath of white roses around it, and long white gloves, and little white shoes. And she had a white lace scarf and a live white rose at her waist.

"I thought I'd better dress the part," she said, a little nervously, "for the sake of the clerks, you know."

"How beautiful you are," he said, becoming yet another kind of Edward at the sight of her, and looking at her as she stood in the afternoon sunshine. "Why didn't you tell me before how beautiful you were?"

"I... . How silly you are," was all she found to say.

"I wish, though," he said, as they walked together along the gravel of the garden, "that you'd done it for me, and not for those clerks, confound them!"

"I didn't really do it for them," she said. "Oh no--and not for you, either. I did it for myself. I couldn't even pretend to be married in anything but white. It would be so unlucky."

All that he remembered well. And what came afterward--the dingy house with the grimy door-step, and the area where dust and torn paper lay, the bare room, the few words that were a mockery of what a marriage service should be, the policeman who met them as they went in, the charwoman who followed them as they went out, the man at the end of the long, leather-covered table--Edward's old acquaintance, but that seemed negligible--who who wished them joy with, as it were, his tongue in his cheek. And there was signing of names and dabbing of them with a little oblong of pink blotting-paper crisscrossed with the ghosts of the names of other brides and bridegrooms--real ones, these--and then they were walking down the sordid street, she rather pale and looking straight before her, and in her white-gloved hand the prize of the expedition, the marriage certificate, to gain which the mock marriage had been undertaken.

And suddenly the romantic exaltation of the day yielded to deepest depression, and Edward Basingstoke, earnestly and from the heart, wished the day's work undone. It was all very well to talk about mock marriages, but he knew well enough that his honor was as deeply engaged as though he had been well and truly married in Westminster Abbey by His Grace of York a.s.sisted by His Grace of Canterbury. Freedom was over, independence was over, and all his life lay at the mercy of a girl--the girl who, a week ago, had no existence for him. The whole adventure, from his first sight of her among dewy gra.s.s and trees, had been like a fairy-tale, like a romance of old chivalry. He had played his part handsomely, but with the underlying consciousness that it was a part--a part sympathetic to his inclinations, but a part, none the less. The whole thing had been veiled in the mists of poetry, illuminated by the glow of adventure. And now it seemed as though he had thoughtlessly plucked the flower of romance which, with patience and careful tending, would have turned to the fruit of happiness. He had plucked the flower, and all he had gained was the power to keep a beautiful stranger with him--on false pretenses. He wished that she, at least, had not so gaily entered on the path of deception. Never a scruple had disturbed her--the idea of deceiving an aunt who loved her had been less to her than--than what? Less, at least, than the pain of losing him forever, he reminded himself. He tried to be just--to be generous. But at the back of his mind, and not so very far back, either, Iago's words echoed, "She did deceive her father, and may thee." His part of the deception now seemed to him the blackest deed of his life, and he could not undo it. It was impossible to turn to this white shape, moving so quietly beside him, with:

"Let's burn the certificate. Deceit is dishonorable."

If she did not think so ... well, women's code of honor was different from men's. And she _had_ been willing to marry him in earnest, with no deceptions or reservations. This mock business had been, in the end, his doing, not hers. And now they had gone through with it, and here he was walking beside her, silent, like a resentful accomplice. They had walked the street's length, its whole dingy length, in silence. The light of life had, once more, for Mr. Basingstoke, absolutely gone out. They turned the corner, and still he could find nothing to say; nor, it appeared, could she. The hand with the paper hung loosely. The other hand was busy at her belt--and now the white rose fell on the dusty pavement, between a banana-skin and a bit of torn printed paper. He stooped, automatically, to pick up the rose.

"Don't," she said. "It's faded."