TEN O'CLOCK Curtis had seized the opportunity while Hermione was in her room before dinner to rub the blood-stained sleeve of the overcoat with a wet cloth.

He had not, of course, been able to eradicate the ghastly dye wholly from the thick material, but the garment was now wearable, at any rate by night, and he had little fear of attracting attention as he crossed the brilliantly lighted foyer of the hotel.
Passing out by the Fifth Avenue exit, he began the second cigar of the evening, and stood in the porch for a moment to collect his faculties.
The time was five minutes of ten, and he had been married about an hour and a half.

He had just finished his second dinner, and for the guerdon of companionship with the charming and gracious girl whom fate had figuratively thrown into his arms he would cheerfully have tackled a third meal without any personal qualms as to subsequent indigestion.
But, joking apart, he was married.

That was the overwhelming feature of life, a feature which dwarfed every other circumstance much as grimly gigantic Windsor Castle dominates the puny town beneath its walls.

The mere tying of the matrimonial knot had not troubled him.
He was heart whole and fancy free then--or, not to strain the metaphor, he could have boasted those attributes a little earlier in the evening--and he recked nothing of the really serious legal disabilities incurred by the adventure.