She came with him to Venice, careful that he had everything for the journey, papers and cigars. He watched her with a dull sense of pain; the deception hurt him as nothing had done before.
He had converted a shed into a studio, and she had posed for him, as he had said at their first meeting. Already one picture was finished, and he would have sold it, but could not bear to part with it. Another was half done, which he would finish when he came back, he told himself.
In London, summer was at its height, but he had no pleasure in it. The Club nauseated him, and the old companions found him changed, dull and uninteresting. He was out of touch with things. Only Wynter and a few intimates who knew, surmised that the prospect of marriage had caused the change, and behind his back betted how long he would retain faithful to his marriage vows.
Winnie he met only at the lawyer’s the day before the wedding. She found him cold and reserved, but he was startled with the change in her. She was sweetness itself, her voice subdued and a look in her eyes he had never seen before. He thought her much improved, and was glad of it. She made no mention of his absence, nor did she speak of the past, she seemed to be seeing a vision. Wynter and two friends had promised to come to the registry office with him, prepared for a joke, but his face subdued them, and they became silent. A visit to the Club first was insisted upon. Reckavile wore his ordinary clothes, with no sign of the bridegroom about him.
“Cheer up, man,” said Wynter “it’s not an execution you know, and after all there are worse things. You will have a better chance as a married man, they always get the pick of the bunch.”
They all laughed, and Reckavile seemed to rouse himself.
“Another bottle,” he said with his old gaiety, “why are we going thirsty? Call that damned waiter.”
They were far from thirsty, when they came to the place where Curtis looking like an undertaker, met them with the marriage settlement. It was the most wicked document he had ever drawn up, for Reckavile had made over everything which was not entailed to his wife, no doting swain sick with love could have bartered himself away so completely. It was the price he was paying for his folly, but Curtis little knew what was in his mind. It appeared to him sheer madness. Winnie had scarcely looked at it, and she went up in the opinion of the old lawyer, who expected a sordid interest. She seemed quite content to have Hugh without any thought of money. And she certainly was beautiful, more so than ever before, thought Hugh, not realising that every woman is transfigured on her bridal day.
Then for a moment something comes to her in a flash, whether with the organ pealing in some grand old Church, or in the squalid surroundings of the registry office, a light from the Unknown illuminates her soul, and departs leaving only the memory of a guest that tarrieth but an hour.
Winnie had brought a girl friend with her, a devoted little soul who had stuck by her all through and borne with her moods. That she was young and attractive was quite enough for the amorous Wynter, who began to make violent love to her at once.