rally understood that their abrupt
departure was due to Madame Olenska's desire to remove her aunt from
the baleful eloquence of Dr. Agathon Carver, who had nearly succeeded
in enlisting her as a recruit for the Valley of Love; and in the
circumstances no one had expected either of the ladies to return for
the wedding. For a moment Archer stood with his eyes fixed on Medora's
fantastic figure, straining to see who came behind her; but the little
procession was at an end, for all the lesser members of the family had
taken their seats, and the eight tall ushers, gathering themselves
together like birds or insects preparing for some migratory manoeuvre,
were already slipping through the side doors into the lobby.

"Newland--I say: SHE'S HERE!" the best man whispered.

Archer roused himself with a start.

A long time had apparently passed since his heart had stopped beating,
for the white and rosy procession was in fact half way up the nave, the
Bishop, the Rector and two white-winged assistants were hovering about
the flower-banked altar, and the first chords of the Spohr symphony
were strewing their flower-like notes before the bride.

Archer opened his eyes (but could they really have been shut, as he
imagined?), and felt his heart beginning to resume its usual task. The
music, the scent of the lilies on the altar, the vision of the cloud of
tulle and orange-blossoms floating nearer and nearer, the sight of Mrs.
Archer's face suddenly convulsed with happy sobs, the low benedictory
murmur of the Rector's voice, the ordered evolutions of the eight pink
bridesmaids and the eight black ushers: all these sights, sounds and
sensations, so familiar in themselves, so unutterably strange and
meaningless in his new relation to them, were confusedly mingled in his
brain.

"My God," he thought, "HAVE I got the ring?"--and once more he went
through the bridegroom's convulsive gesture.

Then, in a moment, May was beside him, such radiance streaming from her
that it sent a faint warmth through his numbness, and he straightened
himself and smiled into her eyes.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here," the Rector began ...

The ring was on her hand, the Bishop's benediction had been given, the
bridesmaids were a-poise to resume their place in the procession, and
the organ was showing preliminary symptoms of breaking out into the
Mendelssohn March, without which no newly-wedded couple had ever
emerged upon New York.