She yielded, of course.  Who could resist him?  Nor need the details of that interminable journey down the crowded artery of Broadway to the Centre of Things be entered into.  An ignoble errand, Honora thought; and she sat very still, with flushed cheeks, in the corner of the carriage.  Chiltern’s finer feelings came to her rescue.  He, too, resented this senseless demand of civilization as an indignity to their Olympian loves.  And he was a man to chafe at all restraints.  But at last the odious thing was over, grim and implacable Law satisfied after he had compelled them to stand in line for an interminable period before his grill, and mingle with those whom he chose, in his ignorance, to call their peers.  Honora felt degraded as they emerged with the hateful paper, bought at such a price.  The City Hall Park, with its moving streams of people, etched itself in her memory.

“Leave me, Hugh,” she said; “I will take this carriage—­you must get another one.”

For once, he accepted his dismissal with comparative meekness.

“When shall I come?” he asked.

“She smiled a little, in spite of herself.

“You may come for me at six o’clock,” she replied.

“Six o’clock!” he exclaimed; but accepted with resignation and closed the carriage door.  Enigmatical sex!

Enigmatical sex indeed!  Honora spent a feverish afternoon, rest and reflection being things she feared.  An afternoon in familiar places; and (strangest of all facts to be recorded!) memories and regrets troubled her not at all.  Her old dressmakers, her old milliners, welcomed her as one risen, radiant, from the grave; risen, in their estimation, to a higher life.  Honora knew this, and was indifferent to the wealth of meaning that lay behind their discretion.  Milliners and dressmakers read the newspapers and periodicals—­certain periodicals.  Well they knew that the lady they flattered was the future Mrs. Hugh Chiltern.

Nothing whatever of an indelicate nature happened.  There was no mention of where to send the bill, or of whom to send it to.  Such things as she bought on the spot were placed in her carriage.  And happiest of all omissions, she met no one she knew.  The praise that Madame Barriere lavished on Honora’s figure was not flattery, because the Paris models fitted her to perfection.  A little after five she returned to her hotel, to a Mathilde in a high state of suppressed excitement.  And at six, the appointed fateful hour, arrayed in a new street gown of dark green cloth, she stood awaiting him.

He was no laggard.  The bell on the church near by was still singing from the last stroke when he knocked, flung open the door, and stood for a moment staring at her.  Not that she had been shabby when he had wished to marry her at noon:  no self-respecting woman is ever shabby; not that her present costume had any of the elements of overdress; far from it.  Being a woman, she had her thrill of triumph at his exclamation.  Diana had no need, perhaps, of a French dressmaker, but it is an open question whether she would have scorned them.  Honora stood motionless, but her smile for him was like the first quivering shaft of day.  He opened a box, and with a strange mixture of impetuosity and reverence came forward.  And she saw that he held in his hand a string of great, glistening pearls.