Severance could not keep away from the church. To go was undignified, yet he knew that he would go.... Five minutes after his talk with Céline, Tony was in the lift, descending ten storeys of his hotel to the gilding and marble of the ground floor. As in a dream, he ordered a taxi. It came; and--self-conscious, as if he were being married himself--he directed the chauffeur where to drive. Then, still as in a dream, he stared at his reflection in a small mirror, which bobbed as the taxi bounced. It was a consolation to see how handsome and superlatively smart he looked!
He had abandoned his uniform in New York for every-day life; but he was sure that no man in America had clothes to compare in cut with his, which had been built at just the right place in Savile Row. His silk hat was a masterpiece. His tie, his socks, and the orchid in his buttonhole were all of the same shade, and his opal pin repeated the lights and shades of colour.
Well, there was one good thing he _could_ accomplish by turning up at the church. Silently he would show Marise the contrast between a man who was everything he ought to be, and a man who was everything no man should be and live!
The chauffeur slowed at last before a church which looked more English than American, and was perhaps a relic of colonial days. "You can wait," said Severance, getting out. "I may ..." But he forgot the rest. In the porch stood two men, who had evidently just arrived and were talking. It was more like a dream than ever to see a familiar uniform which at a glance took Severance home. Both men wore it. The fighting khaki of his own regiment of the Guards!
The shorter of the two tall officers turned and saw him. It was his own Colonel; and the other was Garth. Then a second taxi drove up, containing Marise Sorel and her mother.
Severance would have stepped to the door of their cab, but Garth was before him.
And so it was, with sunshine striking a line of decorations on the V.C.'s breast, that Marise got the contrast between the men. An orchid is beautiful; but the Victoria Cross, even expressed in ribbon, is better.
"Let me introduce my Colonel, Lord Pobblebrook," said Garth. "He has brought his wife, who is American, home to this country; and when we ran across each other this morning he offered to--to see me through here."