“That saved my life, darling,” he said feelingly.  “Now for it.”

He vanished behind the green windows and came back in a few minutes looking jubilant.

“Nice, fatherly old chap.  Asked me if I realized the gravity of the step I was taking and if you were twenty-one, because if you weren’t I’d have to get the consent of the State Guardian.  And by the way, Marcella, that reminds me.  You’ll simply have to do something to your hair.”

“Why?” she asked, flirting it over her shoulder to see what was wrong with it.  It was tied very neatly with a big bow of tartan ribbon.

“You’ll have to do it up, somehow—­stow it under your hat, don’t you know—­hairpins, old girl, smokers’ best friends.  You can’t be married with your hair down, or they’ll think it isn’t respectable.”

“Oh,” she said meekly.

“By the way, I got the religion wrong.  I simply couldn’t think what you were, so I said an atheist, and he said as the Congregational clergyman hadn’t a full house to-night we’d better go to him.  Lord, what would the Mater say?  She wouldn’t think it legal unless you were married in church with the ‘Voice that breathed o’er Eden’ and a veil.”

“But—­to-night?” she questioned.

“Yes, half-past six.  And I got our father’s professions wrong.  I couldn’t remember what the Pater was for anything, so I said they were both sailors!  Lord, I was in a funk—­and at half-past six to-night I’ll be married and done for.  It’s the biggest scream that ever was!”

They went to a restaurant for 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.