They talked a little in low tones, and I looked at Margarita and thought of the odd chances of life, and how we are hurried past this and that and stranded on the other, and skim the rapids sometimes, to be wrecked later in clear shallows, perhaps. "If you are ready, then?" said Tip, and we all moved across the beach and found ourselves standing on a great, smooth rock that would be cut off in a full high tide, with Caliban, clean and quiet and pathetically attentive, behind us, and with him a curiously familiar stranger, very neatly dressed, with tired eyes. As we grouped ourselves there and Tip pulled a tiny book from his pocket I recollected this stranger's face--it was the telegraph operator! Roger, who forgot nothing, had brought him over for the other witness. "Dearly beloved," said Tip in a clear, deep voice, and I woke with a start and realised that old Roger was being married. Margarita, in her graceful, faded blue gown, gazed curiously at him, one hand in Roger's; the noon sun streamed down on us from a cloudless, turquoise sky; the little waves ran up the points of rocks, broke, and fell away musically. To appreciate those quaint sentences of the marriage service, you must hear them out under the heavens, alone, with no bridesmaids, no voice that breathed o'er Eden, no flowers but the great handful of flaming nasturtiums Roger had put in her hands (no maiden lilies grew on that rock!) and a quiet man dressed just as other men are dressed, with only the consciousness of his calling to separate him from the rest of us. They held their own, those quaint old phrases, I assure you! But it was then I learned to respect them. Nevertheless, Roger _had_ forgotten something. "Where's the ring?" the telegraph operator motioned to me with his lips. His tired eyes expressed a mild interest. I saw Roger's lips purse; for a moment his eyes left Margarita's face and I knew that he had just remembered it. I looked down vaguely, and my eyes fell upon the worn, thin band on my little finger--my mother's mother's wedding-ring. In one of those lightning flashes of memory I saw myself, a lad again, starting for college, and my mother putting it on my finger. "She was the best woman, I believe, that ever lived, Jerry--I took it when she died. I want you to wear it, and perhaps you will think--oh, my darling! I know it is hard to be a good man, but will you try?" My dear, dear mother! I think I tried--I hope so. I slipped it from my finger--I had taken it off sometimes, but never for so good a reason--and pressed it into Roger's hand. He accepted it as unconsciously as if it had come from heaven--and it was my ring that married Margarita. CHAPTER XII I LEAVE EDEN [Illustration: I SEEM TO SEE ... A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN A BLUE DRESS SITTING UNDER A FRUIT TREE]