There was a deathlike silence as Niono slipt the bolt and gallantly handed the bride into the cage. She stepped in as collectedly as if it had been an ordinary Registry Office, and the great tawny beasts retreated sullenly to the other end, where they stood huddled in a row, while the Rev. Ninian, mounting his tub, read an abbreviated form of service in a voice which was quite inaudible in the balcony. I tried to turn my eyes away from the scene that was taking place in that grim cage, and the two figures that were so calmly confronting those formidable brutes--but I felt compelled to look. And it was mortifying to see how trifling after all was the danger they incurred. I am afraid I almost wished that one of the animals would give some trouble--I don't mean of course by any actual attack--but by just enough display of ferocity to make Lurana understand what they _might_ do. But they never even attempted to cross the pole which had been thrust across the cage as a barrier. I was never told there _would_ be a pole! They looked on, mystified--as well they might be--by proceedings to which they were totally unaccustomed, but still impressed, and sleepily solemn. Even the tiger behaved with irreproachable decorum. I understood then what Onion had been careful not to mention; their food had been doctored in some way. If I had only known! _Anybody_ could beard a hocussed lion! And soon the words which made that couple man and wife were pronounced, or rather mumbled--for the Rev. Ninian would have been none the worse for a course of lessons from old Polkinghorne--and the newly-wedded pair came out of the cage without so much as a scratch, to the triumphant blare of the "Wedding March." There was frantic applause as the Professor embraced the bride with an emotion that struck me as overdone, while the Rev. Ninian, Miss Rakestraw, and Chuck, offered their congratulations and Mr Sawkins presented the happy couple with a silver biscuit-box (it may have been electro-plated), and a Tantalus spirit case. But for that unfortunate slip of the razor, those gifts would have been mine--but I was in no mood to think of that just then, when I had lost what was so infinitely more precious. I looked on dully till the party left the arena, declining with excellent taste to return in answer to repeated calls and bow their acknowledgments, and then, as the electric lights were hoisted up again and the elephant was led in to remove the lion's cage, I thought it was time to go. It was all over; there was nothing to stay for now, and most of the people were leaving, so I joined the crowd which streamed down the staircase and along the broad passage to the main exit. Once in the open air, I hurried blindly past the flaring shops in the High Street, neither knowing nor caring where I was going, with only one thought possessing my numbed brain--how different it might all have been if only things had happened otherwise!