“Then this one-flesh business, this is a horrid thing.”
She squeezed her hands into her eyes.
“This is maddening!” she cried, and sprang up and stood looking out of the window.
“One flesh!” she murmured breathlessly, “One flesh!”
Presently she shook herself, and with a long sigh brought the calmness back into her face, then she went and put her two hands on Mrs. Fellowes’ shoulders and looked down on the sad face with a little laugh.
“Look here!” she said, “advise every girl you care about not to try experiments in marriage, and to read the marriage service with the man she is engaged to standing opposite to her, before she dares to quote from it in church before all the rag-tag and bobtail of society. And now, give me my hat and kiss me, you don’t know how much a part of my life your love for me is, even though it is fed on hope only, and—I shall try to be honest to myself without any flagrant brutality to Humphrey,” she said laughing, “I think that is all I can promise just yet. Ah, what a lovely scheme of colour!” she cried, looking at her superb figure, in its dusty-amethyst gown with the flashes of lemon-yellow in it.
“Do you think my father and mother are awake to the fact that I am married to-day?” she demanded.
“If you had heard your mother’s cry when she saw you go up the aisle, and had seen her face—as long as I live I shall never forget either!—you would have no need to ask such a question,” said Mrs. Fellowes, with gentle gravity.
“I thought she looked rather different from usual, and I fancied my father’s arm trembled when I held it. So—so!” she said with a half-mocking smile as she fastened the top button of her glove, “so marriage is so solemn and sacred a subject that it has actually touched the human part of those two people! Ah, Mary, here I am, ready for my new life—do you like me? The outside is satisfactory, is it not? It is quite pleasant to feel so like a whited sepulchre!” she said to Mrs. Fellowes as they went down the stairs, “it excites me.”