And softly breathe these words in accents sweet.
Come sometime to me from that distant shore
Caress and comfort as in days of yore;
Triumphant over death our life shall be:
Oh, promise me; oh, promise me.
Back on the wall behind the altar a blue-eyed man looked down from a portrait with the same kindly, questioning expression Marjorie had always read in his fine eyes. She had asked that the study portrait might be brought down and hung on the wall behind the altar. “I should like him to be there,” she had said simply to Miss Susanna. The old lady had replied rather huskily: “I am sure he will be.”
When within a few feet of the flower-decked spot where Hal and his best man, Danny Seabrooke, waited for her, she cast a calm friendly glance upward at Brooke Hamilton’s portrait. She thought she could almost catch a gleam of approval in his eyes. Then her eyes wandered to Hal, and she smiled and blushed in a kind of tender confusion.
The wedding party took their places before the altar. At Marjorie’s request Mrs. Dean joined her husband and daughter there. Marjorie had declared that she could not be content not to have both her superior officers beside her at the great moment.
Came the solemn, beautiful words of the Episcopal ring service. Marjorie loved the deep tones of Hal’s voice as he made his vows to her of life and death. Her own replies came clear and steady. She had found love and was happily confident for the future. Then their vows were plighted and Hal had placed the ring of their covenant upon her finger.
“Sweetheart,” he said, as he kissed the little ringed hand and then sought her lips. Then he whispered with the fondness of proud possession: “Marjorie Dean Macy.”