op, with green wire shades over the glass windows,
not at all a terrifying place. But Louis took off his hat, mopped his
forehead and looked at her desperately.

"Look here, old girl, I shall never get through this without a
whisky-and-soda. I'm a stammering bundle of nerves. I'll never get our
names down right unless I have a drink to give me a bit of Dutch
courage. If it hadn't been for that Melbourne madness I'd have been all
right. But look at me"--and he held out a trembling hand. "Marcella, for
God's sake say you'll let me--"

She felt she could not, to-day of all days, preach to him, but she could
not trust herself to speak. She merely nodded her head, and without
waiting another instant he darted into the nearest hotel, leaving her
standing on the pavement. Her heart was aching, but every moment, every
word he said made her all the more cussedly determined to see the thing
through, and he certainly looked better when he came out ten minutes
later.

"That saved my life, darling," he said feelingly. "Now for it."

He vanished behind the green windows and came back in a few minutes
looking jubilant.

"Nice, fatherly old chap. Asked me if I realized the gravity of the step
I was taking and if you were twenty-one, because if you weren't I'd have
to get the consent of the State Guardian. And by the way, Marcella, that
reminds me. You'll simply have to do something to your hair."

"Why?" she asked, flirting it over her shoulder to see what was wrong
with it. It was tied very neatly with a big bow of tartan ribbon.

"You'll have to do it up, somehow--stow it under your hat, don't you
know--hairpins, old girl, smokers' best friends. You can't be married
with your hair down, or they'll think it isn't respectable."

"Oh," she said meekly.

"By the way, I got the religion wrong. I simply couldn't think what you
were, so I said an atheist, and he said as the Congregational clergyman
hadn't a full house to-night we'd better go to him. Lord, what would the
Mater say? She wouldn't think it legal unless you were married in church
with the 'Voice that breathed o'er Eden' and a veil."

"But--to-night?" she questioned.

"Yes, half-past six. And I got our father's professions wrong. I
couldn't remember what the Pater was for anything, so I said they were
both sailors! Lord, I was in a funk--and at half-past six to-night I'll
be married and done for. It's the biggest scream that ever was!"

They went to a restaurant for