was pulled so low that he could only see a gleam of the eyes that he had been positive in the lightning’s flare were either black or brown. The office lights revealed them brown—gray-brown. The baffling thing about the costume the girl wore was a veil. He would have called it a widow’s veil. It was thick; it was black; a broad satin band finished the edges. The band covered the mouth and chin; the hat shaded the eyes and a mask-like gleam of eye and a line across the cheek and nose were all Jamie was permitted to see of his prospective bride.
For a minute he experienced a sense of shock, and then he realized that in some manner death figured in the adventure he was embarking on that day. The girl was in mourning. Possibly, after all, the man whose place he was taking was a dead man who might have fulfilled his obligations if he had been granted the opportunity; but, at any rate, the girl had distinctly said that she must be rescued from shame. So if a dead man figured in the case, he hadn’t been very much of a man, and it was shameful that he had left the marriage ceremony to any chance of disaster.
These things were tearing through Jamie’s brain swift as light flashes, while Jamie himself lifted the Bee Master’s hat and brought his own heels together and presented a figure that would at least have been worthy of consideration by any woman. His hasty rush after the ring that was to save his self-respect, that was to put a crowning touch of pride on his only wedding, had set his heart pumping unduly, and so his cheeks were not so white as they
