Nan was leaning on the arm of a stranger he had never seen before--an uncle from the West. She was pale--deathly pale and walked with a hesitating movement as though weak from illness. Suddenly his heart went out to her in a flood of pity and tenderness. He tried to make her feel this, but she passed without a glance. She had not seen him. The procession moved slowly back to the altar, and a solemn hush fell on the throng. Stuart listened to the ceremony with a vague impersonal interest, as if it were something going on in another world. A single question was burning itself into his brain--the price of a woman! "Have we all our price?" he asked, searching deep into his own soul. Something pathetic in the white face of the bride had touched the deepest sources of his being. "Have I, too, my price, oh, boastful soul?" he cried. "Would I sell my honour for a million? No. For ten, fifty, a hundred millions? No--not in the market place, no--but would I sell by a compromise of principle in the secret conclave of my party--at a sale the world could never know--would I sell for the Presidency of the Republic? Or would I sell now to win this woman? Would I? Would I? If so, I should hold her blameless. Have all men and all women a price if we but name it? Answer! Answer!" And then from the depths of his being came the burning words: "No. By God, I swear it. No!" He looked up with a start, wondering vaguely if the crowd had heard this cry from something inside which he knew in that moment was bigger than the world without. No, they were intent on the drama at the altar. The minister was saying: "With this ring I thee wed----" he couldn't see, but he knew the ring was being placed on the third finger of the left hand--chosen by tradition because a vein of blood was supposed to run direct from that finger to the heart--what a solemn farce! And now he was saying: "What God hath joined together--let not man put asunder----" "'God!' Surely he didn't say 'God,'" Stuart brooded. "Does God, the august, mysterious, awful creator of the universe, work like this? Did not the God of heaven and earth give this woman to him beneath the sunny skies of the South while their souls sang for joy?" They were moving again down the aisle, the organ throbbing the recessional from Mendelssohn. A wave of emotion swept the crowd inside and they became a mob of vulgar, chattering, gossiping fools swarming over the church as if it were the grandstand of a racecourse, without hesitation tearing down and stealing its decorations for souvenirs. When Stuart reached the door it was pouring rain. He was glad of it. The splash of the rain in his face was refreshing and the breath of the storm was good. He walked for an hour facing the wind, not knowing or caring where it might lead. By a curious law of reaction, all resentment and anger were gone, and only a great pity for Nan began to fill his heart. CHAPTER X GROPING