ake each other for wife and husband, and listened to their
replies. Androvsky's voice sounded to him hard and cold as ice when it
replied, and suddenly he thought of the storm as raging in some northern
land over snowbound wastes whose scanty trees were leafless. But
Domini's voice was clear, and warm as the sun that would shine again
over the desert when the storm was past. The mayor, constraining himself
to keep awake a little longer, gave Domini away, while Suzanne dropped
tears into a pocket-handkerchief edged with rose-coloured frilling, the
gift of Monsieur Helmuth. Then, when the troth had been plighted in the
midst of a more passionate roaring of the wind, the priest, conquering a
terrible inward reluctance that beset him despite his endeavour to feel
detached and formal, merely a priest engaged in a ceremony that it was
his office to carry out, but in which he had no personal interest, spoke
the fateful words:

"_Ego conjungo vos in matrimonium in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus
Sancti. Amen_."

He said this without looking at the man and woman who stood before him,
the man on the right hand and the woman on the left, but when he lifted
his hand to sprinkle them with holy water he could not forbear glancing
at them, and he saw Domini as a shining radiance, but Androvsky as a
thing of stone. With a movement that seemed to the priest sinister in
its oppressed deliberation, Androvsky placed gold and silver upon the
book and the marriage ring.

The priest spoke again, slowly, in the uproar of the wind, after
blessing the ring:

"_Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini_."

After the reply the "_Domine, exaudi orationem meam_," the "_Et
clamor_," the "_Dominus vobiscum_," and the "_Et cum spiritu tuo_," the
"_Oremus_," and the prayer following, he sprinkled the ring with holy
water in the form of a cross and gave it to Androvsky to give with gold
and silver to Domini. Androvsky took the ring, repeated the formula,
"With this ring," etc., then still, as it seemed to the priest, with
the same sinister deliberation, placed it on the thumb of the bride's
uncovered hand, saying, "_In the name of the Father_," then on her
second finger, saying, "_Of the Son_," then on her third finger, saying,
"_Of the Holy Ghost_," then on her fourth finger. But at this moment,
when he should have said "_Amen_," there was a long pause of silence.
During it--why he did not know--the priest found himself thinking of the
saying of St.