“I wonder if I couldn’t find you a chair down there in the back room?”

She shook her head.

“It wouldn’t be worthwhile,” she answered, “the ceremony will soon be over. You are very kind, but I’ll be all right.”

He adjusted his arm so it would better support her, and somehow it helped and calmed her to feel him standing there. She had no idea how he looked or who he was. She hadn’t really looked at him. She just knew he was kind, and that he was a stranger who didn’t know a thing about her awful predicament. If he had been a friend who knew, she couldn’t have stood with him there. But it was like being alone with herself to have him staying there so comfortingly. After it was over she would never likely see him again. She hoped he would never know who she was nor anything about it. She hadn’t really thought anything about him as a personality. He was just something by the way to lean upon in her extremity.

The pink bridesmaids were halfway up the middle aisle now, the green at the formal distance behind, the violet just entering past the first rank of seats with the blue waiting behind. Their faces wore the set smile of robots endeavoring to do their best to keep the step. There was no evidence so far that either the wedding party or the audience had discovered anything unusual about this wedding or unexpected about the bride. She suddenly gasped at the thought of the gigantic fraud that she was about to perpetrate. Had she a right to do this? But it was too late to think about that now.

Sherrill’s eyes went back to the bridegroom standing there waiting, his immaculate back as straight and conventional as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred a half hour before. She remembered with a stab of pain the powder that he had brushed from his left lapel. Was there any trace of it left? She had a sudden sick faint feeling as if she would like to lay her head down and close her eyes. She reeled just a tiny bit, and the young man by her side shifted his arms, putting the right one unobtrusively about her so that he could better steady her, and putting his left hand across to support her elbow. She cast him a brief little flicker of a smile of gratitude, but her eyes went swiftly back to the slow procession that was advancing up the aisle, so slow it seemed to her like the march of the centuries.

The bride was standing in the doorway now, just behind the yellow-clad maid of honor, her hand lying on the arm of the distant cousin, her train adjusted perfectly; no sign on the face of the maid of honor that she had noticed it was the wrong bride whom she had just prepared for her appearance. They didn’t know it yet! Nobody knew what was about to happen except herself! The thought was overwhelming!

Suddenly her eyes were caught by the little figure in gray down in the front seat. Aunt Pat! Poor Aunt Pat! What would she think? And after all her kindness, and the money she had spent to make this wedding a perfect one of its kind! She must do something about Aunt Pat at once!

Her trembling fingers sought the catch of her handbag and brought out pencil and paper. The young man by her side watched her curiously, sympathetically. Who was this lovely girl? What had stirred her so deeply? Had she perhaps cared for the bridegroom herself, and not felt able to face the audience during the ceremony? Or was the bride her sister, dearly beloved, whom she could not bear to part from? They truly resembled one another, gold hair, blue eyes; at least he was pretty sure this one’s eyes were blue, as much as he could judge by the brief glimpse he had had of them here in the dimness of the gallery.

She was looking about for someplace to lay her paper, and there was none, because the gallery rail was completely smothered in palms.

“Here!” he said softly, sensing her need, and drew out a broad, smooth leather notebook from his pocket, holding it firmly before her, his other arm still about her.

So Sherrill wrote rapidly, with tense, trembling fingers:

Dear Aunt Pat:
I’m not getting married tonight. Please be a good sport, and don’t let them suspect you didn’t know. Please, dearest.
Sherrill

The young man beside her had to hold the notebook very firmly. He couldn’t exactly help seeing the hastily scrawled words, though he tried not to—he really did. He was an honorable young man. But he was also by this time very much in sympathy with this unknown lovely girl. However, he treated the whole affair in the most matter-of-fact way.

“You want that delivered?” he whispered.

“Oh, would you be so good?”

“Which one? The little old lady in gray right down here?”

“Oh, how did you know?” Sherrill met his sympathetic gaze in passing wonder.

“I saw you looking down at her,” he answered with a boyish grin. “You want her to read it before she leaves the church?”

“Oh yes, please! Could you do it, do you think?”

“Of course,” he answered with confidence.