But Bayard and Helen knew these things not, nor thought of them. They had been married, as it was decided, upon that Saturday, the day before. Helen’s father married them. There was no wedding party, no preparation. Helen had a white gown, never worn before; Jane Granite sent some of her mother’s roses, and Mrs. Carruth, who distinguished herself by abnormal self-possession, fastened one of the roses at Helen’s throat. It was thought best that Windover should know nothing of the marriage until the preacher and his bride had left the town; so it was the quietest little wedding that love and the law allow. And Bayard and Helen went to her old home in the glory and the blossom of the Cesarea June. And the great cross came out upon the Seminary green, for the moon was up that week. “It used to divide us,” she whispered; “it never can again.” She wondered a little that he did not answer; but that he only held her solemnly, in the window where they stood to see the cross. Helen’s happy nature was easily queen of her. She had begun to feel that her anxiety for Bayard’s sake was overstrained. Tragic Windover slipped from her consciousness, almost from her memory. She felt the sacred right of human joy to conquer fate, and trusted it as royally as she had trusted him. In spite of himself, he absorbed something of her warm and brilliant hopefulness. When she gave herself, she gave her ease of heart. And so the worn and worried man came to his Eden. XXVIII. Helen’s happy heart proved prophet; so they said, and smiled. For there was no mob. Sunday dawned like a dream. The sun rode up without cloud or fire. The sea carried its cool, June colors. The harbor wore her sweetest face. The summer people, like figures on a gay Japanese fan, moved brightly across the rocks and piers; Bayard and Helen looked out of the windows of the Flying Jib, and watched them with that kindness of the heart for the interests of strangers which belongs to joy alone. A motionless fleet lay in the harbor, opening its silvery wings to dry them in the Sunday sun. The fishermen had hurried home by scores to witness the dedication. Everybody had a smile for the preacher’s bride,--the boarder on the rocks, the fisherman from the docks. Every child or woman to whom she had ever done a kindness in her inexperienced, warm-hearted fashion, remembered it and her that day. She wore the unornamented cream-white silk dress in which she had been married; for Bayard asked it. “The people will like to see you so,” he said. “It will give them a vision.”