Gradually, as my eyes grew accustomed to the semi-darkness, I could see that my future wife was lying upon her side, and with her face turned from me.
“Take her hand,” commanded the man to whom I had sold myself.
I obeyed.
“Proceed with the ceremony.”
The clergyman droned off the service by heart with the characteristic nasal intonation. Probably I faltered a little at the responses, but my dying bride never hesitated. Though her voice was low as distant music, her every word was prompt and clear.
I gave the alias I frequently used, Vladimir Mordvinoff, and when I uttered the name I fancied that she started.
“Mojnoli?” she gasped in a strange half-whisper, but she did not turn to look at me. It was evident, however, that she spoke Russian.
The ceremony concluded, we were pronounced man and wife; I was the husband of a girl who was insane, and whose face I had never looked upon!
Was ever there a stranger marriage? The thin wasted fingers that lay in my grasp were cold. A strange sense of guilt crept over me when I remembered that I had bound myself irrevocably to her, deceiving her during her last moments upon earth.