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At an urgent call from one of her cousins, she started and almost threw the box, with its contents, into a drawer. Feverishly she began to dress. It was much later than she had realised. When she appeared in the hall with the other bridesmaids, some one remarked upon her deathly pallor, but she shrank away behind the bride, anxious only to screen herself from observation. She would have given all she had to have avoided Tots just then, but there was no escape for her. He was in the church-porch as she entered it, though there was no time for more than a hurried hand-clasp.

The church was very hot, and the crush of guests great. She listened to the marriage service as a prisoner might listen to his death sentence. The irrevocability of it was anguish to her tortured imagination. And all the while she was conscious–vividly, terribly conscious–of Tots’s presence, Tots’s inscrutable scrutiny, Tots’s triumph of possession. He would never let her go, she felt. She was his beyond all dispute. He had asked, and she had bestowed, not understanding what she was doing.

There could be no withdrawal now. She could not picture herself asking for it, and she was sure he would not grant it if she did. He would only laugh.

There fell a sudden silence in the church–a curious, unnatural silence. It seemed to be growing very dark, and she wondered, panting, if it were the darkness that so smothered her. With a sharp movement she lifted her face, gasping as a half-drowned person gasps. And everywhere above, around her, were tiny, dancing points of light.

* * * * *

“That’s better,” said Tots. “Don’t be frightened. It’s all right.”

He rubbed her cheek softly, reassuringly, and then fell to chafing her weak hands. Ruth lay back against a grave-mound and stared at him. He was wonderfully gentle with her, almost like a woman. On her other side one of her fellow bridesmaids was stooping over her, holding a glass of water.

“You fainted from the heat,” she explained. “But you are better now. I shouldn’t go back if I were you. It’s just over.”

With a sense of shame Ruth withdrew her hand from Tots.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

“Nonsense!” said Tots kindly. “Nobody’s blamin’ you, my child. It’s this infernal heat. You stay quietly here for a bit. I must go back and see that Danvers signs his name all right. But I’ll come and fetch you afterwards.”

He departed, and Ruth suddenly realised an urgent need for solitude. She turned to her cousin.

“Do please go! I shall be all right. It is cool and shady here. And they will be looking for you in the vestry. Please go! I will wait till–Tots comes back.”

Her cousin demurred a little, but it was obvious that her inclination fell in with Ruth’s request, and it was also quite obvious that Ruth did not want her. So, after some persuasion, she yielded and went.

During the interval that followed, Ruth sat in the quiet corner just out of sight of the vestry door, bracing herself to meet Tots and implore him to set her free. It was a bad quarter of an hour for her, and when, at the end of it, Tots came, she looked on the verge of fainting again.

“Sorry I couldn’t come before,” said Tots. “But my responsibilities are over now, thank the gods. I suppose, now, you didn’t have time for anything to eat before you came?”

This was the actual truth. Ruth owned it with a feeling of guilt. And suddenly she found that she could not speak then. There was something that made it impossible. Perhaps it was the loud clash of the bells overhead.

“I am very sorry,” she said again.

Tots smiled.

“You must manage better at our own weddin’,” he said. “There’s nothin’ like fortifyin’ yourself with a good substantial meal for an ordeal of this sort. You’re feelin’ better, eh? Take my arm.”