“Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “Give me a glass of champagne.” An hour later they were motoring to London alone, at last alone, and to this pair Heaven opened its seventh door. They dined in the private sitting-room of the suite which under the inspiration of Isobel he had taken at a London hotel, and then after the curious-eyed waiters had cleared the table, sat together in front of the fire, hand in hand, but not talking very much. At length Isobel rose and they embraced each other. “I am going to bed now,” she said; “but before you come, and perhaps we forget about such matters, I want you to kneel down with me and say a prayer.” He obeyed as a child might, though wondering, for somehow he had never connected Isobel and Prayer in his mind. There they knelt in front of the fire, as reverently as though it burned upon an altar, and Isobel said her prayer aloud. It ran thus: “O Unknown God Whom always I have sought and Whom now I think that I have found, or am near to finding; O Power that sent me forth to taste of Life and gather Knowledge, and Who at Thine own hour wilt call me back again, hear the prayer of Isobel and of Godfrey her lover. This is what they ask of Thee: that be their time together on the earth long or short, it may endure for ever in the lives and lands beyond the earth. They ask also that all their sins, known and unknown, great or small, may be forgiven them, and that with Thy gifts they may do good, and that if children come to them, they may be blessed in such fashion as Thou seest well, and afterwards endure with them through all the existences to be. O Giver of Life and Love Eternal, hear this, the solemn marriage prayer of Godfrey and of Isobel.” Then she rose and with one long look, left him, seeming to his eyes no more a woman, as ten thousand women are, but a very Fire of spiritual love incarnate in a veil of flesh. CHAPTER XX ORDERS Godfrey and his wife never went to Cornwall after all, for on Christmas Day the weather turned so bad and travelling was so difficult that they determined to stop where they were for a few days. As for them the roof of this London hotel had become synonymous with that of the crystal dome of heaven, this did not matter in the least. There they sat in their hideous, over-gilded, private sitting-room, or, when the weather was clear enough, went for walks in the Park, and once to the South Kensington Museum, where they enjoyed themselves very thoroughly. It was on the fourth morning after their marriage that the blow fell. Godfrey had waked early, and lay watching his wife at his side. The grey light from the uncurtained window, which they had opened to air the over-heated room, revealed her in outline but not in detail and made her fine face mysterious, framed as it was in her yellow hair. He watched it with a kind of rapture, till at length she sighed and stirred, then began to murmur in her sleep.