“We’ll be waiting for you.  You are very kind.”  Ruth turned back toward the stairs.

Later, when the Reverend Henry Dolby entered the Spurlock room, his wife and daughter trailing amusedly behind him, and beheld the strained eagerness on the two young faces, he smiled inwardly and indulgently.  Here were the passionate lovers!  What their past had been he neither cared nor craved to know.  Their future would be glorious; he saw it in their eyes; he saw it in the beauty of their young heads.  Of course, at home there would have been questions.  Were the parents agreeable?  Were they of age?  Had the license been procured?  But here, in a far country, only the velvet manacles of wedlock were necessary.

So, forthwith, without any preliminaries beyond introductions, he began the ceremony; and shortly Ruth Enschede became Ruth Spurlock, for better or for worse.  Spurlock gave his full name and tremblingly inscribed it upon the certificate of marriage.

The customary gold band was missing; but a soft gold Chinese ring Spurlock had picked up in Singapore—­the characters representing good luck and prosperity—­was slipped over Ruth’s third finger.

“There is no fee,” said Dolby.  “I am very happy to be of service to you.  And I wish you all the happiness in the world.”

Mrs. Dolby was portly and handsome.  There were lines in her face that age had not put there.  Guiding this man of hers over the troubled sea of life had engraved these lines.  He was the true optimist; and that he should proceed, serenely unconscious of reefs and storms, she accepted the double buffets.

This double buffetting had sharpened her shrewdness and insight.  Where her husband saw only two youngsters in the mating mood, she felt that tragedy in some phase lurked in this room—­if only in the loneliness of these two, without kith or kin apparently, thousands of miles from home.  Not once during the ceremony did the two look at each other, but riveted their gaze upon the lips of the man who was forging the bands:  gazed intensively, as if they feared the world might vanish before the last word of the ceremony was spoken.

Spurlock relaxed, suddenly, and sank deeply into his pillows.  Ruth felt his hand grow cold as it slipped from hers.  She bent down.

“You are all right?”—­anxiously.

“Yes ... but dreadfully tired.”

Mrs. Dolby smiled.  It was the moment for smiles.  She approached Ruth with open arms; and something in the way the child came into that kindly embrace hurt the older woman to the point of tears.

These passers-by who touch us but lightly and are gone, leaving the eternal imprint!  So long as she lived, Ruth would always remember that embrace.  It was warm, shielding, comforting, and what was more, full of understanding.  It was in fact the first embrace of motherhood she had ever known.  Even after this woman had gone, it seemed to Ruth that the room was kindlier than it had ever been.