“Of course.  Didn’t I tell you yesterday that Ozzie’s only function at my wedding was to be indispensable.  He was very much afraid at first when I started on the scheme, but he soon warmed up to it.  I’ll give him credit for seeing that secrecy was the only thing.  If we’d announced it beforehand, we should have been bound to be beaten.  You see that yourself, don’t you, dearest?  And after all, it’s our affair and nobody else’s.”

“That’s just where you’re wrong,” said Mr. Prohack grandly.  “A marriage, even yours, is an affair of the State’s.  It concerns society.  It is full of reactions on society.  And society has been very wise to invest it with solemnity—­and a certain grotesque quality.  All solemnities are a bit grotesque, and so they ought to be.  All solemnities ought to produce self-consciousness in the performers.  As things are, you’ll be ten years in convincing yourself that you’re really a married woman, and till the day of your death, and afterwards, society will have an instinctive feeling that there’s something fishy about you, or about Ozzie.  And it’s your own fault.”

“Oh, dad!  What a fraud you are!” And the girl smiled.  “You know perfectly well that if you’d been in my place, and had had the pluck—­which you wouldn’t have had—­you’d have done the same.”

“I should,” Mr. Prohack immediately admitted.  “Because I always want to be smarter than other people.  It’s a cheap ambition.  But I should have been wrong.  And I’m exceedingly angry with you and I’m suffering from a sense of outrage, and I should not be at all surprised if all is over between us.  The thing amounts to a scandal, and the worst of it is that no satisfactory explanation of it can ever be given to the world.  If your Ozzie is up, produce him, and I’ll talk to him as he’s never been talked to before.  He’s the elder, he’s a man, and he’s the most to blame.”

“Take your overcoat off,” said Sissie laughing and kissing him again.  “And don’t you dare to say a word to Ozzie.  Besides, he isn’t in.  He’s gone off to business.  He always goes at eleven-thirty punctually.”

There was a pause.

“Well,” said Mr. Prohack.  “All I wish to state is that if you had a feather handy, you could knock me down with it.”

“I can see all over your face,” Sissie retorted, “that you’re so pleased and relieved you don’t know what to do with yourself.”

Mr. Prohack perfunctorily denied this, but it was true.  His relief that the wedding lay behind instead of in front of him was immense, and his spirits rose even higher than they had been when he first woke up.  He loathed all ceremonies, and the prospect of having to escort an orange-blossom-laden young woman in an automobile to a fashionable church, and up the aisle thereof, and raise his voice therein, and make a present of her to some one else, and breathe sugary nothings to a thousand gapers at a starchy reception,—­this prospect had increasingly become a nightmare to him.  Often had he dwelt on it in a condition resembling panic.  And now he felt genuinely grateful to his inexcusable daughter for her shameless effrontery.  He desired greatly to do something very handsome indeed for her and her excellent tame husband.