Beck had taken a room at the Blackstone Hotel and there she had packed, written letters, dressed for her wedding. Lottie joined her there. Beck had lost her telephone hysteria and was fairly calm and markedly pale. She wore a taffeta frock and a small blue hat and none of her jewelry. "I haven't even got an engagement ring," she said almost in triumph to Lottie. "We didn't have time. Sam's going to buy it now--or after we're married. I spent the whole morning on Michigan Avenue, shopping. Look." "How's the Camp Funston laundress going to handle that, Beck dear?" "I don't care. I wanted it nice. I've waited so long. But I'd have been willing to go away with one shirtwaist and a knitted union suit, honestly I would. It wouldn't have made any difference to me. I got back here at twelve and had a bath and a bite of lunch and I packed and dressed, and then, Lottie, I knelt down by the bed and prayed. I don't know why I knelt down by the bed, exactly. I suppose because that's the way you see them kneeling in the pictures or something. But anyway I liked doing it. Lot, do you think I'm too pale? H'm? I put on quite a lot of rouge and then I took it all off and now----" A message from the hotel office announced Sam. They went down. With Sam was a nervous and jocular best man, Ed Morrow. They drove to the minister's study adjoining the church. It was an extremely unbridal-looking party. Lottie, in her haste, was wearing an old Georgette dress and a sailor hat recently rained on (no one was buying new clothes these days) and slightly out of shape. The best man waxed facetious. "Cheer up, Sam old boy! The worst is yet to come." He mopped his face and winked at Lottie. They were ushered into the minister's little study. He was not yet there. They laughed and talked nervously. There was a warm-looking bottle of mineral water on the window ledge; a bookcase full of well bound books with an unread look about them; a bust of Henry Ward Beecher; a brown leather chair scuffed, dented, and shiny with much use; a little box of digestive tablets on the flat-topped desk. Sam, in his smartly tailored uniform, seemed to fill the room. Beck did not take her eyes from him. He was not at all the chubby middle-aged person that Lottie had known. He looked a magnificently martial figure. The fact that he was in the ordnance department did not detract from the fit, cut, and becomingness of his uniform. Dr. Little came in, a businesslike figure in gray tweed. A little silence fell upon the four. The wedding service began. Dr. Little's voice was not the exhorting voice of the preacher. Its tone, Lottie thought, was blandly conversational. All of a sudden he was saying "pronounce you man and wife" and Lottie was kissing the bride and the groom and even the best man who, immediately afterward, looked startled and then suspicious. Beck had a calm and matronly air. It had descended upon her, complete, like an all-enveloping robe.