y, Victor, if--You don't
think you have overworked, do you?"

I laughed as I met his eyes scanning my face anxiously for traces of
the possible insanity.

"No; none of the slates are loose at present," I said. "That's all
right, but I am seedy altogether; out of sorts all round--that's all."

CHAPTER VII.

One unbroken flood of golden sunlight lay like a fallen silken veil
over the points and peaks of the downs, over the swelling sides and the
soft rolling dip of the valley, and the still September blue stretched
cloudless overhead. It was the late afternoon of the thirteenth, a day
that had been hot, oppressive, stifling in town, but here was simply
warm, still, and tranquil.

All through the early hours of the day a parallel--if one may use the
idea--oppression to the heat in the stirless air had weighed upon me.
We had been married that morning, and before the ceremony my one
sensation had been that of strain, during it tense anxiety, and
afterwards reproach, and none of these are pleasant emotions. When I
looked back to the morning, now, it seemed to be in the far distance; I
don't know why, but ages seemed to have elapsed in the hours of this
day.

Lucia had come up to the altar, her face whiter, more absolutely
colourless than the veil over it, and my heart sank with apprehension
as I first caught sight of her. Never, except in death, and already
with the coffin enclosing it, have I seen a face so pallid. She walked
steadily--she was a woman who always walked well, as a swan swims well,
by nature--and the graceful figure passed on calmly towards us.

She kept the lids drooped over her eyes, and her white lips were closed
firmly in repose. It seemed like a statue moving, and for a second I
felt as if the church, the people, she, I, the whole scene were unreal,
and my own blood changing into stone. The next second she was beside
me, and then she suddenly lifted her eyes.

They glowed upon me as if there were actual fire stirring in the
lustrous black pupils, and they gave back the joyous beat to my pulses,
and sent my blood flowing onward again. The glance made us both human
directly. But how anxious I felt all the time. Would she faint? I asked
myself, desperately, over and over again. The colour of her face was
terrifying, and the hand she gave me for the ring was cold as the touch
of snow, and trembled convulsively. How long it all seemed! and how I
loathed the prayers and the hymns, and sickene