And after the chops and the most of the tinned salmon and the very new loaf were gone they fell to with fine effect upon a tapioca pudding.  Their talk was fragmentary.  “Did you hear her call me Madame?  Madame—­so!” “And presently I must go out and do some shopping.  There are all the things for Sunday and Monday morning to get.  I must make a list.  It will never do to let her know how little I know about things....  I wish I knew more.”

At the time Lewisham regarded her confession of domestic ignorance as a fine basis for facetiousness.  He developed a fresh line of thought, and condoled with her on the inglorious circumstances of their wedding.  “No bridesmaids,” he said; “no little children scattering flowers, no carriages, no policemen to guard the wedding presents, nothing proper—­nothing right.  Not even a white favour.  Only you and I.”

“Only you and I. Oh!”

“This is nonsense,” said Lewisham, after an interval.

“And think what we lose in the way of speeches,” he resumed.  “Cannot you imagine the best man rising:—­’Ladies and gentlemen—­the health of the bride.’  That is what the best man has to do, isn’t it?”

By way of answer she extended her hand.

“And do you know,” he said, after that had received due recognition, “we have never been introduced!”

“Neither have we!” said Ethel.  “Neither have we!  We have never been introduced!”

For some inscrutable reason it delighted them both enormously to think that they had never been introduced....

In the later afternoon Lewisham, having unpacked his books to a certain extent, and so forth, was visible to all men, visibly in the highest spirits, carrying home Ethel’s shopping.  There were parcels and cones in blue and parcels in rough grey paper and a bag of confectionery, and out of one of the side pockets of that East-end overcoat the tail of a haddock protruded from its paper.  Under such magnificent sanctions and amid such ignoble circumstances did this honeymoon begin.

On Sunday evening they went for a long rambling walk through the quiet streets, coming out at last into Hyde Park.  The early spring night was mild and clear and the kindly moonlight was about them.  They went to the bridge and looked down the Serpentine, with the little lights of Paddington yellow and remote.  They stood there, dim little figures and very close together.  They whispered and became silent.

Presently it seemed that something passed and Lewisham began talking in his magnificent vein.  He likened the Serpentine to Life, and found Meaning in the dark banks of Kensington Gardens and the remote bright lights.  “The long struggle,” he said, “and the lights at the end,”—­though he really did not know what he meant by the lights at the end.  Neither did Ethel, though the emotion was indisputable.  “We are Fighting the World,” he said, finding great satisfaction in the thought.  “All the world is against us—­and we are fighting it all.”