Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/403

Rh Yes, there it is, word for word, line for line, and for a full minute I sit staring at the paper. The words are there, but my brain does not seem to be able to grasp their meaning; no, not even when my tongue repeats the announcement aloud, as though the sound of my voice might reassure and convince me. I am married, married! and here I give my head an impressive little nod, as much as to say, "You are a poor creature, Helen Adair, and you don't seem to know exactly what you are about: but one thing you may be sure of—you are married." I feel something like the old woman who left it to her little dog to decide whether she was herself or somebody else. The little dog decided against her; the paper decides against me. Here I sit, without the ghost of a wedding-ring on my finger, and yet I am George Tempest's wife; clearly there must be a slight hitch somewhere. My stiff hand relaxes, and the paper flutters to the ground. If it were only out of sight I might get my breath back, but with its respectable, commonplace front facing mine, how can I possibly treat it as a myth? I take my eyes away from it, and glance round the room. There is the breakfast-table: there are the canaries pecking at each other from contiguous cages: there is the old family Prayer-book, high and dry, among Blair's sermons, on the book-case; there is the cat asleep on the hearth-rug. It all looks familiar and real enough, but nevertheless I am asleep, and I know it, just as one may have a dream within a dream, and in the last one believe that one is awake. I lift my sleeve, and give my arm a good nipping, rousing pinch (not that people under the influence of bad dreams usually have the sense to bethink themselves of that homely remedy), and expect to see all my surroundings dissolve, but no, there they are still, and here am I, in a grey gown, not a robe de nuit. That I am broad awake there can be no reasonable doubt, and that the paper is a very evident fact there can be no doubt either. Oddly enough the first idea that now enters my head is, "What will the governor