groom the next morning. The great circles under her eyes
told the story of a sleepless night. But nothing in Taylor's manner
betrayed that he noticed that she was looking otherwise than as usual.

While she was dressing, Nora had come to a final decision. Quite calmly
and unemotionally she would explain the situation to him. She would
point out the impossibility, the absurdity even, of keeping an agreement
entered into, by one of the parties at least, in hot blood, and
thoroughly repented of, on later and saner reflection. In the remote
event of this unanswerable argument failing to move him, she would
appeal to his honor as a man not to hold her, a woman, to so unfair a
bargain. She had even prepared the well-balanced sentences with which
she would begin.

But as she stood with her cold hand in his warm one, he forestalled her
by exhibiting, not without a certain boyish pride, the marriage license
and the plain gold band which was to bind her. If these familiar and
rather commonplace objects had been endowed with some evil magic, they
could not have deprived her of the power of speech more effectively.

Without a protest, she permitted herself to be led to the waiting
carriage, provided in honor of the occasion. It seemed but a moment
later that she found herself being warmly embraced by a motherly
looking woman, who, it transpired, was the wife of the clergyman who had
just performed the ceremony.

From the parsonage they drove directly to the station.

CHAPTER XI

The journey had seemed endless: it was already nightfall when they
arrived at the town of Prentice, where they were to get off and drive
some twelve miles farther to her new home. And yet, endless and
unspeakably wearying as it was, her heart contracted to find that it was
at an end.

She realized now how comfortable, even luxurious, her trip across the
Continent had been by comparison. Then, she had traveled in a Pullman.
This, she learned, was called a day-coach. Her husband did everything in
his power to mitigate the rigors of the trip. He made a pillow for her
with his coat, bought her fruits, candies and magazines from the
train-boy, until she protested. Best of all, he divined and respected
her disinclination for conversation. At intervals during the day he left
her to go into the smoking-car to enjoy his pipe.

The view from the window was, on the whole, rather monotonous. But it
would have had to be varied indeed to match the mental