Together

to become her husband. Her father, with a last gentle pressure of her arm, had taken his place behind her. In the hush that had fallen throughout the little chapel, all the r

swayed slowly in the air, which was heavy with earthy odors of all the riotous new growth that was pushin

ess an unexpected stillness settled, as if for these few moments she were poised between the past of her whole life and the mysterious future. All the preoccupations of the engagement weeks, the strange colorings of mood and feeling, all the petty cares of t

the subdued movements in the chapel, of people breaking into the remote circle of her mystery,-even here they must needs have their part-and of the man beside her looking intently at her, with flushed face. It was this man, this one here at her side, whom she had chosen of all that might have come into her life; and suddenly he seemed a

ve formula which symbolizes that the woman is to be made over from one family to another a

r's large palm. The father's lips twitched, and she knew he was feeling the solemnity of his act, that he was relinquishing a part of himself to another. Their marriage-her fa

ave and to hold … in sickness and in health … until d

pauses, word by word, the marriage oath. "I, John, take thee Isabelle," that voice was saying, and she knew that the man who spoke these words in his calm, grave manner was the one she had chosen, to whom she had willed to give herself for all time,-presently she would say it also,-for

pierced her, and her low voice swelled unconsciously with her affirmation. She was to be for always as she was now. They two had not been one

ce, but the voice of some unknown woman within her, who was taking the oath for her in this barbaric ceremony whereby man and woman are bound tog

rversely, here in the moment of her deepest feeling, intruded the consciousness of broken contracts, the waste of shattered purposes. Ah, but theirs was different! This absolute oath of fidelity one to the other, each with his own will and his own desire,-this irredeemable contract of union between man and woman,-it was not always a binding sacrament. Often twisted and broken, men and women promising in the belief of the best within them what was beyond their powe

t rested at those fateful words,-"man and wife,"-the knot of the contract. There should fall a new light in her heart that would make her know they wer

as he might that of any other he could make, sure of his power to fulfil all, confident before Fate. She trembled strangely. Did she know him, this other self? In the swift apprehension of life's depths which came through her heightened

us. All else that concerned married life these two would have to find out for themselves. The thing was done, as ordain

scended the altar steps, gazing down the straight aisle over the black figures, to the sunny village green, beyond into the vista of life! … Triumphant organ notes beat through the chapel, as they passed between the rows of smiling faces,-familiar faces only v

t!' And the other was the large, placid face of a blond woman, older than the bride, standing beside a stolid man at the end of a pew. The serene, soft eyes of this woman were dim w

m branches. Bells began to ring from the library across the green and from the schoolhouse farther down. It was over-the fine old barbaric ceremony, the passing of the irredeem

they passed ou