‘Name, please?’ said he.

‘O Frank!’

‘Name, if you please?’

‘Why, you know.’

‘Say it.’

‘Maude.’

‘That all?’

‘Maude Crosse—­O Frank!’

’You blessing!  How grand it sounds!  O Maude, what a jolly old world it is!  Isn’t it pretty to see the rain falling?  And aren’t the shining pavements lovely?  And isn’t everything splendid, and am I not the luckiest—­the most incredibly lucky of men.  Dear girlie, give me your hand!  I can feel it under the glove.  Now, sweetheart, you are not frightened, are you?’

‘Not now.’

‘You were?’

’Yes, I was a little.  O Frank, you won’t tire of me, will you?  I should break my heart if you did.’

’Tire of you!  Good heavens!  Now you’ll never guess what I was doing while the parson was telling us about what Saint Paul said to the Colossians, and all the rest of it.’

’I know perfectly well what you were doing.  And you shouldn’t have done it.’

‘What was I doing, then?’

‘You were staring at me.’

‘Oh, you saw that, did you?’

‘I felt it.’

‘Well, I was.  But I was praying also.’

‘Were you, Frank?’

’When I saw you kneeling there, so sweet and pure and good, I seemed to realise how you had been given into my keeping for life, and I prayed with all my heart that if I should ever injure you in thought, or word, or deed, I might drop dead now before I had time to do it.’

‘O Frank, what a dreadful prayer!’

’But I felt it and I wished it, and I could not help it.  My own darling, there you are just a living angel, the gentlest, most sensitive, and beautiful living creature that walks the earth, and please God I shall keep you so, and ever higher and higher if such a thing is possible, and if ever I say a word or do a deed that seems to lower you, then remind me of this moment, and send me back to try to live up to our highest ideal again.  And I for my part will try to improve myself and to live up to you, and to bridge more and more the gap that is between us, that I may feel myself not altogether unworthy of our love.  And so we shall act and re-act upon each other, ever growing better and wiser, and dating what is best and brightest in our minds and souls from the day that we were married.  And that’s my idea of a marriage-service, and here endeth the first lesson, and the windows are blurred with rain, and hang the coachman, and it’s hard lines if a man may not kiss his own wife—­you blessing!’