tion was it finished? There was no end,
no finish, only this roaring vast space. Did one never get old,
never die? That was the clue. He exulted strangely, with
torture. He would go on with his wife, he and she like two
children camping in the plains. What was sure but the endless
sky? But that was so sure, so boundless.

Still the royal blue colour burned and blazed and sported
itself in the web of darkness before him, unwearyingly rich and
splendid. How rich and splendid his own life was, red and
burning and blazing and sporting itself in the dark meshes of
his body: and his wife, how she glowed and burned dark within
her meshes! Always it was so unfinished and unformed!

There was a loud noise of the organ. The whole party was
trooping to the vestry. There was a blotted, scrawled
book--and that young girl putting back her veil in her
vanity, and laying her hand with the wedding-ring
self-consciously conspicuous, and signing her name proudly
because of the vain spectacle she made:

"Anna Theresa Lensky."

"Anna Theresa Lensky"--what a vain, independent minx she
was! The bridegroom, slender in his black swallow-tail and grey
trousers, solemn as a young solemn cat, was writing
seriously:

"William Brangwen."

That looked more like it.

"Come and sign, father," cried the imperious young hussy.

"Thomas Brangwen--clumsy-fist," he said to himself as he
signed.

Then his brother, a big, sallow fellow with black
side-whiskers wrote:

"Alfred Brangwen."

"How many more Brangwens?" said Tom Brangwen, ashamed of the
too-frequent recurrence of his family name.

When they were out again in the sunshine, and he saw the
frost hoary and blue among the long grass under the tomb-stones,
the holly-berries overhead twinkling scarlet as the bells rang,
the yew trees hanging their black, motionless, ragged boughs,
everything seemed like a vision.

The marriage party went across the graveyard to the wall,
mounted it by the little steps, and descended. Oh, a vain white
peacock of a bride perching herself on the top of the wall and
giving her hand to the bridegroom on the other side, to be
helped down! The vanity of her white, slim, daintily-stepping
feet, and her arched neck. And the regal impudence with which
she seemed to dismiss them all, the others, parents and wedding
guests, as she went with her young husband.

In the cottage big fires were burning, there were dozens of
glasses on the table, and holly and mistl