waiting for Gloria. The little grey man whom they
called "judge," and who had a way of clearing his throat before and
after the most trifling remark, went up and down with his hands under
his coat-tails, peering near-sightedly at pictures and books and
wall-paper.

"Quite a tidy little place Ben Gaynor's got here," he said
patronizingly. "Quite a tidy little place."

Gratton paced back and forth, whirling always abreast of the stairs,
looking up expectantly. Steve Jarrold, the man whom Gloria had heard
laugh, never budged from the spot where he had landed when entering the
living-room; his wide, spraddled legs seemed rooted through the big feet
into the floor. Big-framed and bony, with startlingly black restless
eyes and a three or four days' growth of wiry beard no less lustrously
black, he was ragged, unkempt, and unthinkably dirty. His eyes roved all
about the room; they came back to Gratton, sped up the steps, came back
to Gratton with a leer in them, and all the while he turned and turned
his black dusty hat like a man doing a job he was being paid for.

At last, since no delay holds back for ever the rolling of the great
wheels of time, Gloria came. Slowly she descended the stairs, one hand
at her breast, one gripping the banister. Her pallor was so great that
her lips, though pale also, looked unnaturally red in contrast. They
were just a little apart; she seemed to breathe with difficulty. Her
eyes, glancing wildly about the room and at the men to be seen in the
hallway, were the eyes of one in a trap, seeking frantically for escape,
knowing that there was no escape. Her brain, like one's in a fever, was
quick to impressions, alive with broken fragments of thought like so
many flashes of vari-coloured light. She noted trifles; she saw a
painting over Gratton's head--a seascape her father had given her for
her fourteenth birthday. She saw three pairs of eyes staring at her,
men's eyes, to her the eyes of wild animals; she read as clearly as if
their messages had been in large, printed letters what lay in the mind
of each: in the little grey man's, the judge's, speculation; in Steve
Jarrold's, the jeers of a man of Jarrold's type at such a moment when
they fall upon the bride; in Gratton's, quickened desire of her and
triumphant cunning.

"My dear," said Gratton, coming forward as though to meet her and then
pausing abruptly and holding back, "this is Judge--Judge Summerling. He
will--perform the ceremony, you