Anderson strolled down the deserted street and turned the corner on to Main Street.  Then he strolled on until he reached the church.  It was brilliantly lighted.  Peering people stood in the entrance and the sidewalk before it was crowded.  There was a line of carriages in waiting.  But everything was still except for the unintermittent voices of the night, which continued like the tick of a clock measuring off eternity, undisturbed by anything around it.  From the church itself a silence which could be sensed seemed to roll, eclipsing the diapason of an organ.  Not a word of the minister’s voice was audible at that distance.  Instead was that tremendous silence and hush.  Anderson wondered what that pretty, ignorant little girl in there was, to dare to tamper with this ancient force of the earth?  Would it not crush her?  If the man loved her would he not, after all, have simply tried to see to it that the fair little butterfly of a thing had always her flowers to hang over:  the little sweets of existence, the hats and frocks and ribbons which she loved, and then have gone away and left her?  A great pity for the bride came over him, and then a flood of yearning tenderness for the other girl, greater than he had ever known.

In his awe and wonder at what was going on all his own rebellion and unhappiness were gone.  He felt only that yearning for, and terror for, that little, tender soul that he loved, exposed to all the terrible and ancient solemn might of existence, which the centuries had rolled up until her time came.  He longed to shield her not only from sorrow, but from joy.  He took off his hat and stood back in the shadow of a door on the opposite sidewalk.  It seemed to him that the ceremony would never end.  It was, in fact, unusually long, for the Banbridge minister had much to say for the edification of the bridal pair, and for his own aggrandizement.  But at last the triumphant peal of the organ burst forth, and the church swarmed like a hive.  People began to stir.

All the heads turned.  The rustle of silk was quite audible from outside, also a gathering sibilance of whispers and rustling stir of curious humanity, exactly like the swarming impetus of a hive.  Fans fluttered like butterflies over all this agitation of heaving shoulders and turning heads in the church.  Outside, the people standing about the steps and on the sidewalk separated hurriedly and formed an aisle of gaping curiosity.  A carriage streaming with white ribbons rolled up, the others fell into line.  Anderson could see Samson Rawdy on the white-ribboned wedding-coach, sitting in majesty.  He was paid well in advance; his wife, complacent and beaming in her new silk waist, was in the church.  The contemplation of the new marriage had brought a wave of analogous happiness and fresh love for her over his soul.  He was as happy with his own measure of happiness as any one there.  Every happiness as well as every sorrow is a source of centrifugal attraction.