The telegram, therefore, announcing their marriage found Zora entirely unprepared for the news it contained.  What a pitiful tragedy lay behind the words she was a million miles from suspecting.  She walked with her head above such clouds, her eyes on the stars, taking little heed of the happenings around her feet—­and, if the truth is to be known, finding mighty little instruction or entertainment in the firmament.  The elopement, for it was nothing more, brought her eyes, however, earthwards.  “Why?” she asked, not realizing it to be the most futile of questions when applied to human actions.  To every such “Why?” there are a myriad answers.  When a mysterious murder is committed, everyone seeks the motive.  Unless circumstance unquestionably provides the key of the enigma, who can tell?  It may be revenge for the foulest of wrongs.  It may be that the assassin objected to the wart on the other man’s nose—­and there are men to whom a wart is a Pelion of rank offense, and who believe themselves heaven-appointed to cut it off.  It may be for worldly gain.  It may be merely for amusement.  There is nothing so outrageous, so grotesque, which, if the human brain has conceived it, the human hand has not done.  Many a man has taken a cab, on a sudden shower, merely to avoid the trouble of unrolling his umbrella, and the sanest of women has been known to cheat a ’bus conductor of a penny, so as to wallow in the gratification of a crossing-sweeper’s blessing.  When the philosopher asks the Everlasting Why, he knows, if he be a sound philosopher—­and a sound philosopher is he who is not led into the grievous error of taking his philosophy seriously—­that the question is but the starting point of the entertaining game of Speculation.

To this effect spake the Literary Man from London, when next he met Zora.  Nunsmere was in a swarm of excitement and the alien bee had, perforce, to buzz with the rest.

“The interesting thing is,” said he, “that the thing has happened.  That while the inhabitants of this smug village kept one dull eye on the decalogue and another on their neighbors, Romance on its rosy pinions was hovering over it.  Two people have gone the right old way of man and maid.  They have defied the paralyzing conventions of the engagement.  Oh! the unutterable, humiliating, deadening period!  When each young person has to pass the inspection of the other’s relations.  When simpering friends maddeningly leave them alone in drawing-rooms and conservatories so that they can hold each other’s hands.  When they are on probation coram publico.  Our friends have defied all this.  They have defied the orange blossoms, the rice, the wedding presents, the unpleasant public affidavits, the whole indecent paraphernalia of an orthodox wedding—­the bridal veil—­a survival from the barbaric days when a woman was bought and paid for and a man didn’t know what he had got until he had married her and taken her home—­the senseless new clothes which brand them immodestly wherever they go.  Two people have had the courage to avoid all this, to treat marriage as if it really concerned themselves and not Tom, Dick, and Harry.  They’ve done it.  Why, doesn’t matter.  All honor to them.”