woman to thy wedded wife? Love, honor, and keep-in sickness and in health; .? Who giveth this woman? . . . With this ring I thee wed . . .! Pronounce . . . man and wife . . . Amen." Burst of music-turn. Don't step on her train. "Eric, look at me!" Growl from background: "My God, you fool, get off her train!" One, two, three. Long aisle ahead. . . bleak sea of faces, all turned.. "You're going too fast, Eric! Take it slower, dear!" Tum-tede-dum-dum-dum. One, two, three; one, two, three. Firm pressure on his arm. Teedle-de-teedle-de- teedle-de-de-de. A few steps more . . . cold air on his face and he never would be a bachelor

again.

It wasn't that he didn't want to be married: Mildred was the dearest girl in all the world and all that. But tomorrow? It seemed so-so imminent. Damned imminent! He ought to be the happiest man in all New York instead of! Hang it all! it must have been that bachelor dinner that upset him. Bachelor dinner? Only bachelor there . . . wouldn't be a bachelor this time to-morrow night. Queer feeling-shaky, somehow! Pretty ghastly-that dinner! No pep! Why, five years ago that crowd couldn't have been pried apart before morning-here it was not yet midnight, and... going home alone. "Trains," "Little Jerry down with the measles," "Had to get home to the Missus"-all perfectly good excuses. Marriage had done that. Had they looked at him with pity?

Half way down the block some one bumped into him-a street girl. She laughed loudly. Absently he lifted his hat and stepped to one side. As he turned in at the door he looked back; the girl, too, had looked back; she stood poised expectantly, waiting one foot on the running-board of a checkered taxicab; the street light flickered suggestively about her; she made a little movement with her head. In answer Eric shook his -half playfully. What perfume! Even if he were not going to be married . . .! He passed on into the house. Suppose he had stopped and talked to her? After to-morrow he wouldn't have the right; married men that played around with

women deserved all they got. Talking to her wouldn't have done any harm—a sort of innocent farewell to vice? No, that was college stuff; he didn't really want to talk to her. Not fair to her, either. . . . Poor kid! A man would have to be pretty low, or pretty drunk.

As he mounted the stairs it came home to him with something of a pang that this would be the last night he would ever be going up those stairs. Yes, marriage meant a change-a big change. Of course, Mildred was an exceptional girl; the past year had proved that. Still, it would be a change-a change in every way. A man ought not to wait until he was thirty-too hard to change. Now at twenty, or even twenty-five, it would have been different. He wouldn't have minded leaving the old place. Odd, he hadn't expected to mind.

Feeling his way along the familiar corridor, he remembered-exactly as he had done nightly for three long years now— that he really ought to insist on more light. It wouldn't matter now. His hand touched the familiar door. Never any more . . .! Absently, he began a search through various pockets-a search impeded by his overcoat. Yes, the new place would be better; not so convenient to the office; but better in every way—for a married man. For himself, he didn't mind; one got used to things-even stairs. Hang it all, he hadn't meant to take a cigarette-where was that latch-key?

The door grated on its hinges-no use to oil it now. He pressed a button. This would be the last time he would ever be letting himself alone into a dark and empty apartment. After to-night he would have Mildred with him-always. The light must be turned off at the other end. Yes, he had had it over there packing. Starting across the room he barked his shin against some solid object. Damn that trunk-had to be careful. Crash! What was that? Sounded like glassmust have broken it, whatever it was! How unfamiliar that armchair looked over there-out of place, ghastly, somehow, with the green light from the window shimmering over it; it startled one, like-like something dead under water. Those two long pools of light from the windows were like water-exactly.

wouldn't need-might as well make a clean sweep, clear out everything. From the desk and trunk he began heaping things into a pile. Probably nothing compromising in any of those old letters-he didn't have time to go through them. Better burn them, save explanations perhaps! No, never any more would anything happen. In all the past-somehow -it seemed to him that mighty little ever had happened. . . . Things must happen to other men. Of course, there had been experiences, but somehow-they never had come up to expectation, what he felt they should have.

He sat down on a box and gazed moodily into the fire. What was it he had expected? What was it that never had quite come true? Was it that all along he had been comparing them to . . . but that was impossible-too long ago-probably just a boyish illusion even then; the effect of moonlight and the Mediterranean. If he met Marcia now; he never had known her, really. ..! Just a rash boy in love with love. . .! She had been mighty sweet about it-forgiven him and all that. No man in his senses would have done such a fool thing. . . . But that one kiss she gave him: not at all like Mildred's kisses! Mildred was real; Marcia was mostly dream; that must be the difference. He wondered vaguely if she ever had come back to New York. It seemed he would have heard; but New York was so big! Yes, all along he must -unconsciously-have been thinking that if he just could find a girl like Marcia. . . But Marcia wasn't a girl to marry; Mildred was the girl for that-a man wanted children and all that. He couldn't quite visualize a married life with Marcia. No, for day in and day outMildred every time; she was part of his life; he couldn't get along without Mildred. But Marcia? After to-morrow he mustn't think about her-draw comparisons; not fair to Mildred.

Yet, he couldn't get it out of his head: there had been something oddly wonderful about kissing Marcia-just for a moment-like keying in on the radio-some strange new wave length; some unknown force, contacted and then lost; some impossible reality that had been almost too ineffably delicious to be borne. What

was that line: "Thou canst not see my face... and live!"? That was from the Bible, wasn't it? God's face? What had God to do with it? Eric sat up very straight. Maybe that was it-maybe God was like that. It wouldn't do to tell the church people that! Still, if God was so wonderful, and you compared Him to the best thing you had ever known . . .? Could one experience God? If so, the worst thing must be to find him and then to lose him, and—remember... Maybe that was what had happened; maybe people were only trying to get back. Tomorrow, at high noon, in the Church of the Ascension, bridesmaids—the bride; "Till death do us part"; and always only to remember!

A moment later Eric found himself standing on his feet, startled out of his revery, strangely excited. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Some one was ringing his door-bell. It must be past one o'clock; Mildred would never have been so foolish! After pushing the button that released the down-stairs door, he went to the head of the stairs and leaned over the balustrade. Yes, some one was coming up-a swift, light step; a faint swish of draperies on the landing; a woman's high heels. It didn't sound like Mildred. He remembered the letters left scattered over the floor. Better get them out of the wayin any case.

With long strides he re-entered the apartment, gathered up the letters, and piled them hastily into the fireplace, where they caught and blazed up, casting a great light about the room, sending ruddy reflections down the dark corridor. As Eric turned, he caught his breath sharply, and his heart began to do strange things: first, it drew itself up into a knot that hurt; then it gave a great leapturned a complete somersault, in fact; and, then, after a second of complete stillness, it began to beat in an amazing highpowered way that sent the blood surging in long, hot, irregular swells over his entire body.

For, down the darkened corridor, like some bright medieval phantom, there advanced a bewildering apparition: it might have been some slender young archangel, muffled to the shoulders in a brilliant robe a delicate white-throated,

face; from something of gentle aloofness, of artless assurance in all the unstudied grace of the ethereal form, it might have stepped forth from a frame in the old Uffizi, evoked through the dark varnish of half a thousand years, summoned into life, fresh, unhurried, just a little wondering, to confront the complicated problems, the tangled illusions of a turbulent mankind.

And in Eric's mind the years had withered away, and he was only a love-sick boy again a boy drunk on moonlight and mad desire as he swung himself from a garden wall to the edge of an old stone balcony under winking tropical stars.

Eric's eyes had not left her face. And now, instead of all the things he might have said, he heard a voice that seemed to be his own, remarking lamely: "I-I didn't know you were in New York."

The girl's eyes swept the disordered room. "Are you alone?" she asked. "Yes," he answered in the same flat voice.

Her eyes fell upon the fragments of letters scorched and curling upon the hearth. "Burning letters," she said, as if to herself. "Yes. I suppose a man would . . . odd; a woman wouldn't." She turned to Eric.

"I'm going to be married to-morrow," he said. Even to himself his voice

sounded uncomfortably like that of a guilty schoolboy. He made haste to add: "The place is in rather a mess."

The girl smiled enigmatically; she did not seem to have heard.

"I said I was going to be married tomorrow," he repeated doggedly.

"Yes, I know. It was in the paper." Eric removed some books from an armchair.

"Won't you sit down?" he inquired. As the girl crossed to the arm-chair, the glittering cloak which she still kept drawn about her seemed to flash back brighter lights than those that came from the fire. Seating herself, she looked up at Eric, and made a little motion toward a footstool that stood full in the light of the blazing fire. "Sit there," she requested, "I want to see your face." Eric obeyed.

"And the next day, when I came down, I found that you had run away. Eric, why did you run away so quickly?"

"I didn't see that there was anything else for me to do."

"No, you didn't," there was just a hint of mockery in her voice. Presently, she continued as if thinking aloud: "I wonder, had I come back to America sooner, if I would have looked you up?"

"You haven't been back in all these years?"

"No. I only landed last week. But even then, I hadn't planned to see you.... But, to-night, somehow, I had to come. She threw back her cloak and revealed to his astonished gaze the lithe young body clad only in fragile silk pajamas of a delicate apple green, that the brocade had concealed. "You see, I didn't even take time to dress. You don't mind! It is

"One does."

"And I? Do you find me changed?" she asked.

"You're more beautiful, if anything," he replied.

Marcia's eyes turned away from him and wandered around the room.

"This this girl you're going to marry? Is she beautiful?" she inquired.

Eric flushed. "Most people think so," he said.

"And you love her very much?" "Yes," he said shortly. "Then, you're perfectly happy?" At the repetition of Mildred's phrase, Eric started slightly.

"Yes," he said again.

"Ah... !" The gray eyes were very serious as she added: "Eric, I wouldn't want you to make a mistake."

Again he could feel the blood crimsoning his forehead. "That's good of you," he replied.

"Sometimes, I've felt very guilty about you, Eric."

"About me?"

Once more the gray eyes travelled about the room, and then came back to him. "If I remember correctly, it was you who paid me a visit-that last time?" she questioned a little mockingly.

There was a touch of pain in Eric's smile.

interview."

Eric stood up hurriedly.

"You don't mind," he said, a little breathlessly, "if I go on packing!"

The girl gave him a quick glance. "Why, no, of course not," she said lightly. "Only give me a cigarette, before you commence!" From a gold mesh-bag she produced a long green holder. Eric found a cigarette, and endeavored to keep his fingers from shaking as he lighted it for her. This done, he turned to the packing.

"You can talk to me as I pack," he suggested.

For some minutes she watched him in silence. At length she remarked gravely: "Of course, I don't know your plans, but wouldn't it be better, instead of putting the books in the trunk and your underwear in the packing-box, to-ah-reverse the arrangement?"

Eric became very conscious of the back of his neck; he hoped that Marcia wasn't looking at it. "This isn't final," he said, cursing his stupidity. "I'm just sorting things," he explained after an uncomfortable pause.

"Yes? But I warn you that if you wrap up another shoe in a clean dress shirt, you may have a time explaining it to your your Myrtle when she unpacks."

"Her name's Mildred, not Myrtle," he said in an injured voice.