I held my breath; would she repudiate me? Even the priest suspected something unusual; he stopped and looked at us, for she stood gazing at me with a rigid face, but becoming suddenly aware of the pause she turned quietly toward him and, to my amazement, went on with her part of the service, answering his questions in the affirmative without another sign of recognition. A moment afterwards, her hand, ice cold, lay in mine, and—I could not help it—involuntarily, I stooped and kissed it, and looking up, encountered a singular expression in her eyes. But I could not read her thoughts; she had a greater self-control than I ever saw before in woman. The priest had joined our hands and he began now to chant the one hundred and twenty-eighth psalm. We should have responded, repeating the alternate verses, but we did not, and he heeded our silence very little. Now and then the noises without drowned his voice and I lost a verse, but much of that psalm was burned into my brain on that day.
“‘For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands; O well is thee, and happy shalt thou be!
“‘Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine upon the walls of thine house.
“‘Thy children like the olive-branches round about thy table.’”
He held our hands united and slightly lifted, and his chant rose shrill and clear:
“‘... Thou shalt see Jerusalem in prosperity all thy life long.
“‘Yea, that thou shalt see thy children’s children, and peace upon Israel.’”
With these words, he lifted two garlands of rue and placed one on her head and one on her shoulders, because Kurakin, being a widower, could not be crowned with rue. I felt her hand quiver in mine as he pronounced the final solemn, “let no man put asunder,” and raising a great goblet of claret held it out for us to pledge him three times. I drank of it, and she barely touched it with her lips and then the priest emptied the glass and gave it again to me, and I flung it on the floor, breaking it in pieces and trampling it, repeating, as I did so, the saying I had heard in the Cathedral:
“‘May they thus fall under our feet and be trod to pieces who endeavour to sow division or discontent between us!’”
There was a solemn pause. I stood looking down at the shattered glass and the red wine stains on the floor. It was over; the Princess Daria was my wife and I held her hand firmly. She was mine, and mine she should be, against the world; I swore it, in my heart, before that altar.