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small hotel in London, and to it were invited only a couple of Stephen’s friends, who also acted as witnesses.
    The bride, in a simple suit of dark leaf green, with a heavier coat worn over it when they set off for the coast and the Channel port where they boarded a steamer for Calais, had a slightly dazed look in her brown eyes while the brief ceremony in a register office lasted, and afterwards there was none of the brilliance of a bride about her. Her golden hair, worn short, so that it was a little like a primrose cap, showed to advantage under the little green hat she wore, and her skin looked entrancingly fair with a slight, hectic flush rising up on her cheekbones when the well-known heart specialist who had given her away lifted his glass to toast her as a bride.
    Then, as there was nothing to change out of, and they were all ready for the road, they set off in Stephen’s long black car to begin a honeymoon on the Continent that was never to become an established fact, and like the uneaten cake—reposing in a tin at Grangewood!—was never to provide them with memories.
    Only one nightmare memory at the very outset.

 
    CHAPTER IV
    On t he way down to Dover Stephen was in such an excellent humour that Penny, who was very quiet by comparison, glanced at him occasionally to find out how much of it was forced, and how much was genuine.
    There had been one moment during the morning, just before they were made man and wife, when she had felt him grow stiff and taut beside her, and when she glanced at him she had seen that his lips were set. She would always remember the grim compression of those lips, the faint but noticeable pallor that showed up his dark eyebrows and the blackness of his hair as it lay sleekly against his head. In that moment she knew that he was renouncing everything in the nature of true happiness in the future, and such a wild alarm seized hold of her heart, such a panic because she knew definitely that she was doing the wrong thing!—that it very nearly got the better of her, and she only just stopped herself saying “No, no, I can’t!” when the registrar asked her if she would take Stephen Mervyn Blair to be her lawful wedded husband.
    Afterwards, when it was all over, and Stephen’s two old friends were proffering their congratulations, Stephen seemed to undergo a kind of metamorphosis. His mood, which had been so intensely sober, so grave, became gay as if he hadn’t a care in the world—as if he was, indeed, a happily married man—and he caught Penny in his arms and kissed her on the lips and took her breath away for one ecstatic moment of time.
    Then he suggested that they repair without delay to the hotel where they were to have lunch, and although there were only four of them, he made such inroads on the champagne already reposing in an ice-bucket beside their table that Penny began to feel a tug of anxiety at her heart.
    Stephen’s eyes were like vivid blue flames, and his smile flashed brilliantly in his lean face. Even in moments of the utmost good humour there was a slightly sardonic cast to his features, and although his mouth was an unusually handsome mouth, it developed a twist when he smiled. Penny had often noticed before that it was a curiously dry twist, which rendered his smile a little mirthless, and when he lifted his glass to acknowledge toasts, the mirthlessness flashed out at the same time that his eyes glowed like blue jewels.
    On the way down to Dover he continued to talk quickly and lightly while he drove, and Penny found it unnecessary to say very much because most of his talk centred round various episodes and incidents in his past life, and although they were often amusing her smile was a trifle forced.
    She began to feel as if there was a lump in her throat that might presently rise up and choke her, and she yearned for just one word from him that would set this wedding day of hers apart from every other day in her life. A word that was not lightly spoken,