“I don’t know,” confessed Tony.  “It is too soon to tell.  Just now Alan fills every nook and cranny of me.  I can’t think of any other man or imagine myself loving anybody else as I loved him.  But I am a very much alive person.  I don’t believe I shall give myself to death forever.  Alan himself wouldn’t want it so.  A part of me will always be his but there are other margins of me that Alan never touched and these maybe I shall give to some one else when the time comes.”

“Does that mean Dick—­John Massey?”

“Maybe.  Maybe not.  I have told him not to speak of love for a long, long time.  We must both be free.  He is going to France as a war correspondent next week.”

“Don’t you hate to have him go?”

“Yes, I do.  But I can’t be selfish enough to keep him hanging round me forever on the slim chance that some time I shall be willing to marry him.  He is too fine to be treated like that.  He wants to go overseas unless I will marry him now and I can’t do that.  It is better that we should be apart for a while.  As for me I have my work and I am going to plunge into it as deep and hard as I can.  I am not going to be unhappy.  You can’t be unhappy when you love your work as I love mine.  Don’t be sorry for me, Carlotta.  I am not sorry for myself.  Even if I never loved again and never was loved I should still have had enough for a life time.  It is more than many women have, more than I deserve.”

The bride white day wore on to twilight and as the clock struck the hour of five Ruth Farringdon came down the broad oak staircase clad in the shining splendor of the bridal gown she had “dreamed,” wearing her grandmother’s pearls and the lace veil which Larry’s lovely mother had worn as Ned Holiday’s bride long and long ago.  At the foot of the stairs Larry waited and took her hand.  Eric and Hester flanking the living room door pushed aside the curtains for the two who still hand in hand walked past the children into the room where the others were assembled.  Gravely and brimming with importance the guard of honor followed, the latter bearing the bride’s bouquet, the former squeezing the wedding ring in his small fist.  Ruth took her place beside the senior doctor.  The minister opened his mouth to proceed with the ceremony, shut it again with a little gasp.

For suddenly the curtains were swept aside again, this time with a breezier and less stately sweep and Ted Holiday in uniform and sergeant’s regalia plunged into the room, a thinner, browner, taller Ted, with a new kind of dignity about him but withal the same blue-eyed lad with the old heart warming smile, still always Teddy the beloved.

“Don’t mind me,” he announced.  “Please go on.”  And he slipped into a place beside Tony drawing her hand in his with a warm pressure as he did so.

They went on.  Laurence LaRue Holiday and Elinor Ruth Farringdon were made man and wife till death did them part.  The old clock on the mantel which had looked down on these two on a less happy occasion looked on still, ticking away calmly, telling no tales and asking no questions.  What was a marriage more or less to time?