Thus, from a hundred churches, east and west and south and north, the newly joined couples came to Hallowells' to make merry with their friends. They came from Fulham and Wimbledon, from Kilburn and Epping, from Finchley and Streatham and Woolwich and Denmark Hill; and the hinges of the Bell wore loose with much work, and parcels' delivery vans took the cakes away in great loads each evening, and the strains of the Wedding Marches never ceased, and enough champagne was opened to have converted the great silver-and-white Central Hall into a swimming-bath. And besides the wedding parties, sightseers came also. One of these came daily, occupying a chair under the garlanded and cherubimed twenty-four-hours' clock. His eyes were agog; sometimes, as one in a dream, he half rose from his chair, grasped the hand of some passing bride or bridegroom, murmured something unintelligible, and sat down again, once more watching in a sort of stupid ecstasy. He was Mr. Wellcome.... And Walter Wyron came with Laura Beamish, and they clutched one another, and, both speaking at once, said that Amory and Cosimo must on _no_ account miss this, and Walter sent Cosimo a postcard that very night. Amory and Cosimo came on the morrow, but missed Walter and Laura in the crush, and retired to a sort of recess on the second floor, past which the lift-well ascended. There, sitting down on a narrow padded bench without a back, they talked. Cosimo had all but won Amory. Only a few points remained on which it was necessary that their understanding should be quite clear. "You see, Cosimo," Amory explained earnestly, while the noisy parties went up and down in the lift, "in one sense two rational beings have hardly the right to marry at all as long as the Divorce Laws are in their present chaotic condition. Even a Judicial Separation places a quite unjust stigma on the woman, and the Restitution Decree has become a mere formal step to Divorce itself. There's absolutely no Equality in the contract. As Equity it's a farce from beginning to end. I'm not sure that the wisest thing to do wouldn't be to wait until the Law is altered. I want that one-sided plea of cruelty done away with, or else made the same for both. It's anomalous--it belongs to the Stone Age." "I quite agree," said Cosimo slowly. "But we have our private arrangement about that. It's quite understood that if it isn't a success we each go our own way. You're to be as free as I am, Amory. I've no right to choose your friends for you, male or female. If things come to the worst, I fancy I'm not altogether without a sense of fairness and rationalness and philosophy. So our eyes are quite open." Amory mused. "It's a risk for all that," she murmured. "There may be all sorts of things about both of us that neither of us knows. In a sense, we're complete strangers."