K

"A man who drinks is a broken reed," said Christine. "That's what I'm

going to marry and lean on the rest of my life--a broken reed. And that

isn't all!"

She got up quickly, and, trailing her long satin train across the floor,

bolted the door. Then from inside her corsage she brought out and held to

Sidney a letter. "Special delivery. Read it."

It was very short; Sidney read it at a glance:-Ask your future husband if he knows a girl at 213 --- Avenue.

Three months before, the Avenue would have meant nothing to Sidney. Now

she knew. Christine, more sophisticated, had always known.

"You see," she said. "That's what I'm up against."

Quite suddenly Sidney knew who the girl at 213 --- Avenue was. The paper

she held in her hand was hospital paper with the heading torn off. The

whole sordid story lay before her: Grace Irving, with her thin face and

cropped hair, and the newspaper on the floor of the ward beside her!

One of the bridesmaids thumped violently on the door outside.

"Another electric lamp," she called excitedly through the door. "And Palmer

is downstairs."

"You see," Christine said drearily. "I have received another electric

lamp, and Palmer is downstairs! I've got to go through with it, I suppose.

The only difference between me and other brides is that I know what I'm

getting. Most of them do not."

"You're going on with it?"

"It's too late to do anything else. I am not going to give this

neighborhood anything to talk about."

She picked up her veil and set the coronet on her head. Sidney stood with

the letter in her hands. One of K.'s answers to her hot question had been

this:-"There is no sense in looking back unless it helps us to look ahead. What

your little girl of the ward has been is not so important as what she is

going to be."

"Even granting this to be true," she said to Christine slowly,--"and it may

only be malicious after all, Christine,--it's surely over and done with.

It's not Palmer's past that concerns you now; it's his future with you,

isn't it?"

Christine had finally adjusted her veil. A band of duchesse lace rose like

a coronet from her soft hair, and from it, sweeping to the end of her

train, fell fold after fold of soft tulle. She arranged the coronet

carefully with small pearl-topped pins. Then she rose and put her hands on

Sidney's shoulders.