He banished the thought with a supreme effort. He flung the vision of the future from him with an oath. ‘I _will_ be happy!’ he cried. ‘I can’t think what’s come to me. I never knew what fear was till now.’ Ruth wished to be married quietly, and Marston was quite agreeable. They had no friends they wished to invite. Gertie was to be the only bridesmaid. Marston was asked whom he should have for best man. That puzzled him. He hadn’t a friend in the world he would care to stand by his side when he took sweet Ruth Adrian to be his partner in the journey that lay before him. No link should be there to connect the old life with the new. He said he would think about it, and he did. After much cogitation he came to the conclusion that he couldn’t have one at all. The idea worried him. He knew then that all his life long he had never made a friend whom he dare introduce into the little family circle from which he was taking the chief ornament. ‘We’ll have the wedding very quiet, my darling,’ he said. ‘I won’t have a best man. Gertie can be your bridesmaid, and with your father to give you away, and your mother to say the responses loud, that’s all the company we shall want. We shall be happy enough by ourselves.’ Ruth was quite willing. But there was one point which Marston didn’t care about, but on which Mrs. Adrian was firm. He wanted to be married by license, but Mrs. Adrian insisted that they should be asked in church, and Marston could not offer any determined opposition. On the first Sunday that the banns were published, Ruth made Marston promise to go to church with her. He went. As he passed into the sacred edifice a strange chill came to his heart—a sensation of dread stole over him. He could not account for it. Something in the quiet of the place, in the reverent attitude of the worshippers, in the sonorous and musical voice of the officiating priest, pleading to an unseen power in the poetic and soul-stirring language of the Prayer-book; indeed, the whole service impressed and pained him. He had been a scoffer all his life. He had lived in an atmosphere not so much of unbelief as of indifference. Sitting by the side of Ruth Adrian, bowing his head mechanically with the rest, he found himself repeating the cry for mercy of the Litany, ‘Lord have mercy upon us, miserable sinners,’ and he felt awe-stricken as he thought of the ghastly reality of such a prayer upon his lips. He sat dreamily and moodily through the after part of the service. He heard his name given out coupled with Ruth’s, and he almost expected some one to leap up from among the congregation and cry aloud that there was indeed just cause and impediment why these two should not be joined together in holy matrimony. He would have rushed out of the building had he dared, for he felt that he was challenging Heaven.