minutes before she astonished us by insisting that she and Julie should take up their quarters at the Vicarage, while a lodging would be found for me elsewhere. Pursuit was to be baffled by the simple device of anglicising our names, so that Konstantia became Miss Constance Lily Garland, and I Mr Joseph Bertram (Mr Cotton advised me unhesitatingly to drop the ‘Maria’ as a badge of Popery, and I did so right away). There was more kindness yet in store for us. Mrs Cotton did not think it well for betrothed people to see too much of one another, and her husband, after inquiring into my tastes, got me a temporary post as foreign correspondence clerk to a great shipbuilding firm in the parish. Here I gave so much satisfaction that the firm were good enough to offer me a permanent appointment, and when I declined that, gave me a letter of recommendation to their correspondents in America, which I never presented. That three weeks at Bradcross was quite idyllic. After my day’s work, I would drop in, evenings, at the Vicarage, which lies back of the church. You approach it by a green gate in a high wall, and inside there is a little patch of grass and two or three lilac-bushes. Konstantia used to be waiting for me on the lawn, and there we would sit, never minding the smuts. If I haven’t said much about Konstantia, don’t think it’s because there’s nothing to say. She adored me in a real whole-hearted way, much more than was good for me, I am sure, and never so much as looked back regretfully at what she had given up for my sake. As for me, I was desperately in love yet with my own magnanimity in giving up so much for her, and her devotion pleased me. We really were perfectly happy those evenings, until Mrs Cotton called Konstantia in, and her husband came out to talk theology with me. I had to be stiffened up in my new Protestant principles, you see, and if I met that good man again, I would make him happy by assuring him that since those days I have never entered a Catholic church, any way. Well, the three weeks came to an end, and we were married in our English names, Julie signing the register as Julia Slazenger, but at the Vicar’s suggestion we all wrote our original names on the inside of the cover at the end of the book, with a reference to the proper page, and he pasted a piece of paper over them, so that it might be removed if there was ever any question as to our identity. I have been sorry all the time since that prudence obliged me to break off all relations with these good people as soon as we left Bradcross. You see, any accident would have enabled my family to trace us that far, so it was necessary to start a fresh trail, and I took our passages for New York in the name of Mr and Mrs Steinherz, without telling the Cottons of the change. Moreover, that we might be thoroughly _demokratisch_, as suited the country to which we were going, Julie became my wife’s friend, not her maid.