lunch. She was very hungry; he could eat
nothing. He ordered lemonade for her, adding something in a low tone to
the waiter who went away smiling faintly. She thought he was drinking
lemonade too, but he began to laugh a good deal, and his eyes glittered
queerly all the time.

She was a little overawed by the magnificence of the Hotel Australia
when they went to book rooms; she wished very much that they could be at
the farm; there were so many people about, so many servants quite
inhumanly uninterested in them. At home Jean would have been fussing
about, making them welcome.

It was the queerest, most unromantic wedding. The streets were full of
the Saturday night crowd of pleasure seekers. The chapel was next to a
Chinese laundry; glancing in at the door through the steam she got a
swift vision of two Chinamen ironing collars vigorously. Outside the
chapel door stood a gawky-looking group--a young sailor, very fat and
jolly-looking was being married to a rather elderly woman. Both had
short white kid gloves that showed a little rim of red wrist; their
friends were chaffing them unmercifully; the bride was giggling, the
sailor looking imperturbable. Louis edged towards Marcella.

"I don't want those two Chinks to see me," he whispered nervously.

She stared at him.

"I wish they'd open the door," whispered Marcella.

"So do I. My hat, I wish Violet could come past. She'd kill herself with
laughing. She was married at St. George's, Hanover Square."

That conveyed nothing to Marcella. She was watching a German band
composed of very fat, pink Germans who, on their way to their nightly
street playing outside various theatres and restaurants, had noticed the
group and scented a wedding. They began by playing the "Marseillaise"
and made her laugh by the extreme earnestness of their expression; then
they played the Lohengrin "Bridal March" and had only just reached the
tenth bar when the chapel door opened with a tremendous squeaking and
creaking. The conductor paused with his baton in mid beat and his mouth
wide open as he saw his audience melting away inside the door. Marcella,
laughing almost hysterically, whispered to Louis:

"Give them a shilling or something. They look so unhappy!"

"They're spying on me," he whispered, tossing them a coin which fell
among them and received the conductor's blessing.

Marcella and Louis sat on a bench in a Sunday-school classroom, looking
at "Rebecca at the Well" and a zoolog