"Listen to me, Elizabeth." He had never spoken to her in such a tone before. "I won't be trifled with like this. I have made all the arrangements. I won't have you—jilt me now. You must come with me, or I—I'll know the reason why."
She met his gaze defiantly. "You can't compel me to come you know," she said. And again she would have passed him, and again he stopped her. She did not try a third time, but sank into a chair and put up her hands to her face. A sudden faintness came over her; it might have been the heat, or the sharp, conflicting play of emotion. He followed her and gently took her hands from her face and looked into her eyes.
"Don't be foolish, darling," he said, persuasively. "You know that you love me, that you are only playing with me. You wouldn't really throw me over now."
She looked up reluctantly, fascinated as she had often been before, by the mere physical attraction of his beauty. "I—I don't know," she began slowly, and then stopped frightened at the sound of voices in the shop. A dread flashed over her all at once of a scene in a place like this. The trifling, frivolous consideration turned the scale in Paul's favor. She rose, shook off his grasp, and gave a hasty glance in the glass.
"No, I won't throw you over," she said. "It's all wrong but—as you say, it's too late now. Take care—some one is coming." She gave a warning look at the door, as Paul pressed her hand.
So the threatened scene was averted and Elizabeth's fate was sealed. The people who, after buying candy in the shop, came into the little back room for some ice cream, saw a young woman arranging her hair before the glass, and a young man waiting for her—a not unusual sight.
What followed seemed in after life a dream to Elizabeth. There were times when she tried to think that it had never happened; that the whole thing was a mere figment of the imagination. But on that day she was quite conscious that it was she herself, in very flesh and blood, Elizabeth Van Vorst, who walked by Paul Halleck's side through the glaring, sunny streets of Cranston, went with him into a dimly-lighted church, let him place a ring upon her finger, spoke her share in the marriage service, and wrote her maiden name for what should have been the last time, in the parish register. The clergyman was very old and mumbled over the service; the witnesses, two servants of his, were old and feeble, also, and took but small interest. The church was damp like a tomb after the heat without; Elizabeth found herself shivering as from a chill. It was a relief to come out again into the heat which had been so oppressive before. But on the church steps Elizabeth gave a little cry. A funeral was slowly filing past, its black trappings standing out in incongruous gloom against the noon-day brilliance.
Elizabeth looked at Paul. He had turned very white, and he too was shivering. "It is a bad omen," he said, in a low voice, as if to himself. He said no more, but led the way carefully in the opposite direction from that which the funeral had taken.
They found themselves in a part of Cranston unknown to Elizabeth. The road was bordered on either side by flowering hedges and led apparently into the open country. There were no houses in sight; for the moment, even no people. Halleck suddenly turned and clasped Elizabeth almost roughly in his arms, while he pressed passionate kisses upon her brow, her lips, her hair.
"My darling," he cried "I can't—I can't give you up. I was mad to promise it. Let everything go and come with me to New York."