Project Gutenberg's A Modern Chronicle, Volume 3, by Winston Churchill

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Title: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 3

Author: Winston Churchill

Release Date: October 19, 2004 [EBook #5376]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MODERN CHRONICLE, VOLUME 3 ***

Produced by David Widger

A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill

BOOK II

Volume 3.

CHAPTER I

SO LONG AS YE BOTH SHALL LIVE!

It was late November. And as Honora sat at the window of the drawing-room
of the sleeping car, life seemed as fantastic and unreal as the moss-hung
Southern forest into which she stared. She was happy, as a child is happy
who is taken on an excursion into the unknown. The monotony of existence
was at last broken, and riven the circumscribing walls. Limitless
possibilities lay ahead.

The emancipation had not been without its pangs of sorrow, and there were
moments of retrospection--as now. She saw herself on Uncle Tom's arm,
walking up the aisle of the old church. How many Sundays of her life had
she sat watching a shaft of sunlight strike across the stone pillars of
its gothic arches! She saw, in the chancel, tall and grave and pale,
Peter Erwin standing beside the man with the flushed face who was to be
her husband. She heard again the familiar voice of Dr. Ewing reciting the
words of that wonderful introduction. At other weddings she had been
moved. Why was her own so unrealizable?

"Honora, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live
together after God's ordinance in the holy state of Matrimony? Wilt
thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness
and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him,
so long as ye both shall live?"

She had promised. And they were walking out of the church, facing the
great rose window with its blended colours, and the vaults above were
ringing now with the volume of an immortal march.

After that an illogical series of events and pictures passed before her.
She was in a corner of the carriage, her veil raised, gazing at her
husband, who had kissed her passionately. He was there beside her,
looking