Anybody who was anybody knew all about Laura Beamish and Walter Wyron and a certain noble defeat in their lives that was to be accounted as more than a hundred ordinary victories. That almost historic episode had just shown everybody who was anybody what the world's standards were really worth. Hitherto the Wyrons have been spoken of both as a married couple and as "Walter Wyron" and "Laura Beamish" separately; let the slight ambiguity now be cleared up. Mrs. Cosimo Pratt became on occasion Miss Amory Towers for reasons that began and ended in her profession as a painter; and everybody who was anybody was as well aware that Miss Amory Towers, the painter of the famous feminist picture "Barrage," was in reality Mrs. Cosimo Pratt, as the great mass of people who were nobody knew that Miss Elizabeth Thompson, the painter of "The Roll Call," was actually Lady Butler. But not so with the Wyrons. Reasons, not of business, nor yet of fame, but of a burning and inextinguishable faith, had led to their noble equivocation. Deeply seated in the hearts both of Walter and of Laura had lain a passionate non-acceptance of the merely parroted formula of the Wedding Service. So searching and fundamental had this been that by the time their various objections had been disposed of little had remained that had seemed worth bothering about; and in one sense they had not bothered about it. True, in another sense they had bothered, and that was precisely where the defeat came in; but that did not dim the splendour of the attempt. To come without further delay to the point, the Wyrons had married, under strong protest, in the ordinary everyday way, Laura submitting to the momentary indignity of a ring; but thereafter they had magnificently vindicated the New Movement (in that one aspect of it) by not saying a word about the ceremony of their marriage to anybody--no, not even to the people who were somebody. Then they had flown off to the Latin Quarter. It had not been in the Latin Quarter, however, that the true character of their revolt had first shown. Perhaps--nobody knows--their relation had not been singular enough there. Perhaps--there were people base enough to whisper this--they had feared the singularity of "letting on." It is easy to do in the Boul' Mich' as the Boul' Mich' does. The real difficulties begin when you try to do in London what London permits only as long as you do it covertly.