"And may God bless your union."
The City Clerk had to furnish witnesses from his own staff while
he administered the secular rites and exacted the solemn promises
which so few have kept, and invoked the help of God which is so
rarely manifest or so subtly hidden, in the human-animal-angel
relation of marriage.
And now Anita Adair and Thomas Gilfoyle were officially welded into
one. They had received the full franchise each of the other's body,
soul, brain, time, temper, liberty, leisure, admiration, education,
past, future, health, wealth, strength, weakness, virtue, vice,
destructive power, procreative power, parental gift or lack,
domestic or bedouin genius, prejudice, inheritance--all.
It was a large purchase for three dollars, and it remained to be
seen whether either or both delivered the goods. At the altar of
Hymen, Kedzie had publicly vowed to love, honor, and cherish under
all circumstances. It was like swearing to walk in air or water as
well as on earth. The futile old oath to "obey" had been omitted
as a perjury enforced.
Kedzie Thropp, who had dome to New York only a few months before,
had done one more impulsive thing. First she had run away from her
parents. Now she had run away from herself. She had loved New York
first. Now she was infatuated with Tommie Gilfoyle. He was as
complex and mysterious a city as Manhattan. She would be as long
in reaching the heart of him.
There had been no bridesmaids to give the scene social grace, no
music or flowers to give it poetry, no minister to give it an odor
of sanctity.
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