She clung to him in the ecstasy of reunion, and their lips met in a kiss more tragic than Francesca's and Paolo's, for their guilt was yet to come; while with Vera and her lover guilt had been consummated.
Presently, with a sudden revulsion, she snatched herself from his arms, and stood looking at him reproachfully.
"Oh, my dearest, why did you not stand firm? Think how little this poor life of ours means compared with that which comes after."
"I leave the after-life to the illuminated—to Symeon and his following. I want nothing but the woman I love. Here or hereafter, for me there is nothing else. Vera, forget that I ever tried to forsake you—that I ever set my soul's ransom above my thoughts of you. It was a short madness, a cowardly endeavour. Forget it all, as I shall from this hour. Here are you and I—in this little world which is the only one we know—with just a few more years of youth and love. Let us make the most of them; and when the fire of life dies down, when these fierce heart-throbs are over, we will give our fading years to penitence and prayer."
This is what happens when a man of Claude Rutherford's temperament puts his hand to the plough.
CHAPTER XXI
Just two years after the sudden close of Mr. Rutherford's retreat there was a quiet wedding in Father Hammond's chapel—a bride without bridesmaids, a marriage without music, a bride in a pale grey gown and a black hat, with just a sprinkling of the Disbrowe clan to keep her in countenance. Three stately aunts, Lady Okehampton being by far the most human of the three, and their three noble husbands, with Lady Susan Amphlett, vivacious as ever, and immensely pleased with her friend.
From a conversational point of view she had been living upon this marriage all through the little season of November fog and small dinner-parties at restaurants or at home. She knew so much more than anybody else, and what she knew was what everybody wanted to know. She discussed the subject at Ritz's, at Claridge's, at the Savoy, at the Carlton, and seemed to have something fresh to say at each place of entertainment. There was more variety in her information than even in the hors d'œuvres, which rise in a crescendo of novelty in unison with the newness of the hotel.