’I can’t!  I won’t!  It shall be a runaway match!  I had rather suffer the rack than go through an ordinary wedding!’

Dire was the conflict.  Down at Wrotham there were floods of tears.  In the end, Bella effected a compromise; the marriage was to be at a church, but in the greatest possible privacy.  No carriages, no gala dresses, no invitations, no wedding feast; the bare indispensable formalities.  And so it came to pass.  Earwaker and the girl’s governess were the only strangers present, when, on a morning of June, Malkin and Bella were declared by the Church to be henceforth one and indivisible.  The bride wore a graceful travelling costume; the bridegroom was in corresponding attire.

‘Heaven be thanked, that’s over!’ exclaimed Malkin, as he issued from the portal.  ’Bella, we have twenty-three minutes to get to the railway station.  Don’t cry!’ he whispered to her.  ’I can’t stand that!’

‘No, no; don’t be afraid,’ she whispered back.  ’We have said good-bye already.’

’Capital!  That was very thoughtful of you.—­Goodbye, all!  Shall write from Paris, Earwaker.  Nineteen minutes; we shall just manage it!’

He sprang into the cab, and away it clattered.

A letter from Paris, a letter from Strasburg, from Berlin, Munich—­ letters about once a fortnight.  From Bella also came an occasional note, a pretty contrast to the incoherent enthusiasm of her husband’s compositions.  Midway in September she announced their departure from a retreat in Switzerland.

’We are in the utmost excitement, for it is now decided that in three days we start for Italy!  The heat has been terrific, and we have waited on what seems to me the threshold of Paradise until we could hope to enjoy the delights beyond.  We go first to Milan.  My husband, of course, knows Italy, but he shares my impatience.  I am to entreat you to write to Milan, with as much news as possible.  Especially have you heard anything more of Mr. Peak?’

November the pair spent in Rome, and thence was despatched the following in Malkin’s hand: 

’This time I am not mistaken!  I have seen Peak.  He didn’t see me; perhaps wouldn’t have known me.  It was in Piale’s reading-room.  I had sat down to The Times, when a voice behind me sounded in such a curiously reminding way that I couldn’t help looking round.  It was Peak; not a doubt of it.  I might have been uncertain about his face, but the voice brought back that conversation at your rooms too unmistakably—­long ago as it was.  He was talking to an American, whom evidently he had met somewhere else, and had now recognised.  “I’ve had a fever,” he said, “and can’t quite shake off the results.  Been in Ischia for the last month.  I’m going north to Vienna.”  Then the two walked away together.  He looked ill, sallow, worn out.  Let me know if you hear.’

On that same day, Earwaker received another letter, with the Roman post-mark.  It was from Peak.