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?"