s with herself for making such a lovely spectacle. All
the way she sat flamboyant with bliss because it was all so
lovely. She looked down solicitously at her bouquet: white roses
and lilies-of-the-valley and tube-roses and maidenhair
fern--very rich and cascade-like.

Her father sat bewildered with all this strangeness, his
heart was so full it felt hard, and he couldn't think of
anything.

The church was decorated for Christmas, dark with evergreens,
cold and snowy with white flowers. He went vaguely down to the
altar. How long was it since he had gone to be married himself?
He was not sure whether he was going to be married now, or what
he had come for. He had a troubled notion that he had to do
something or other. He saw his wife's bonnet, and wondered why
she wasn't there with him.

They stood before the altar. He was staring up at the east
window, that glowed intensely, a sort of blue purple: it was
deep blue glowing, and some crimson, and little yellow flowers
held fast in veins of shadow, in a heavy web of darkness. How it
burned alive in radiance among its black web.

"Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" He felt
somebody touch him. He started. The words still re-echoed in his
memory, but were drawing off.

"Me," he said hastily.

Ann bent her head and smiled in her veil. How absurd he
was.

Brangwen was staring away at the burning blue window at the
back of the altar, and wondering vaguely, with pain, if he ever
should get old, if he ever should feel arrived and established.
He was here at Anna's wedding. Well, what right had he to feel
responsible, like a father? He was still as unsure and unfixed
as when he had married himself. His wife and he! With a pang of
anguish he realized what uncertainties they both were. He was a
man of forty-five. Forty-five! In five more years fifty. Then
sixty--then seventy--then it was finished. My
God--and one still was so unestablished!

How did one grow old-how could one become confident? He
wished he felt older. Why, what difference was there, as far as
he felt matured or completed, between him now and him at his own
wedding? He might be getting married over again--he and his
wife. He felt himself tiny, a little, upright figure on a plain
circled round with the immense, roaring sky: he and his wife,
two little, upright figures walking across this plain, whilst
the heavens shimmered and roared about them. When did one come
to an end? In which direc