At noon the married pair arrive--the bridegroom radiant, his hair "half in storm and half in calm--patted down over the left temple--like a frothy cup one blows on to cool it; and the same old blouse that he murders the marble in."[52:1] The bride is--"how magnificently pale!" Most of these young men have seen her before, and always it has been her pallor which has struck them, as it struck Pippa on seeing her alight at Asolo. She is a Greek girl from Malamocco,[52:2] fourteen years old at most, "white and quiet as an apparition," with "hair like sea-moss"; her name is Phene, which, as Lutwyche explains, means sea-eagle. . . . "How magnificently pale"--and how Jules gazes on her! To Gottlieb that gaze of the young, rapturous husband is torture. "Pity--pity!" he exclaims--but he alone of them all is moved to this: Schramm, ever ready with his theories of mysticism and beauty and the immortal idealism of the soul, is unconcerned with practice--theories and his pipe bound all for Schramm; while Lutwyche is close-set as any predatory beast upon his prey; and the rank and file are but the foolish, heartless boys of all time, all place, the "students," mere and transient, who may turn into decent men as they grow older. Well, they pass in, the bridegroom and his snowflake bride, and we pass in with them--but not, like them, forget the group that lurked and loitered about the house as they arrived. + + + + + The girl is silent as she is pale, and she is so pale that the first words her husband speaks are as the utterance of a fear awakened by her aspect-- "Do not die, Phene! I am yours now, you Are mine now; let fate reach me how she likes, If you'll not die: so, never die!" He leads her to the one seat in his workroom, then bends over her in worshipping love, while she, still speechless, lifts her white face slowly to him. He lays his own upon it for an instant, then draws back to gaze again, while she still looks into his eyes, until he feels that her soul is drawing his to such communion that-- ". . . I could Change into you, beloved! You by me, And I by you; this is your hand in mine, And side by side we sit: all's true. Thank God!" But her silence is unbroken, and now he needs her voice-- "I have spoken: speak you!" --yet though he thus claims her utterance, his own bliss drives him onward in eager speech. "O my life to come"--the life with her . . . and yet, how shall he work! "Will my mere fancies live near you, their truth-- The live truth, passing and re-passing me, Sitting beside me?" Still she is silent; he cries again "Now speak!"--but in a new access of joy accepts again that silence, for she must see the hiding-place he had contrived for her letters--in the fold of his Psyche's robe, "next her skin"; and now, which of them all will drop out first?