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 "I don't see why we should wait for anybody, not even your mother. Do you want to?"

"No reason," she said. "No reason."

He had had no notion of such immediateness as marrying her this morning. It had come to him because he had found neither her mother nor stepfather here. What had he to say or do with them? He need not see them or speak with them. Better not, in fact. He need only marry Lida; only that. And get it done before he came out of this God-sent drunkenness.

"I don't want to wait for them," she said.

"Then we won't."

He loosed himself from her and arose, and she sat looking at him, her eyes steady upon his, at last—steady for her; not steady for Ellen Powell. What a comparison to hang in his head—Ellen Powell's steady eyes!

Lida arose slowly, letting the black and scarlet peignoir part to her toes. "I'll get dressed," she said.

"I'll go out."

He thought, as he turned to the door, that only an hour later, after some one—some minister probably, perhaps a justice of the peace, perhaps a priest, he did not know—had mumbled a few words over them, he would stay. He would be her husband, she his wife, for all their lives.

"I'll not be long," Lida's voice said.

"Don't be."

He was in the sunlight of the drawing-room with the white Parian Psyche and the sleepy, enormous cat; and his stir was slipping from him like drunkenness with soberness coming on. Where was Nucast—Nucast, this morning? He could not keep it out of his mind, try as he