When Mallory returned to the "Snowdrop," his ear was greeted by the thud of dropping shoes. He found Marjorie being rapidly immured, like Poe's prisoner, in a jail of closing walls.
She was unspeakably ill at ease, and by the irony of custom, the one person on whom she depended for protection was the one person whose contiguity was most alarming—and all for lack of a brief trialogue, with a clergyman, as the tertium quid.
When Mallory's careworn face appeared round the edge of the partition now erected between her and the abode of Doctor and Mrs. Temple, Marjorie shivered anew, and asked with all anxiety:
"Did you find a minister?"
Perhaps the Recording Angel overlooked Mallory's answer: "Not a damn' minister."
When he dropped at Marjorie's side, she edged away from him, pleading: "Oh, what shall we do?"
He answered dismally and ineffectively: "We'll have to go on pretending to be—just friends."
"But everybody thinks we're married."
"That's so!" he admitted, with the imbecility of fatigued hope. They sat a while listening to the porter slipping sheets into place and thumping pillows into cases, a few doors down the street. He would be ready for them at any moment. Something must be done, but what? what?