No problem. Temperance is shown to the Candidate on the 27th path, the last path before the Portal sub-Grade. The combined influences of Geburah and Chesed converging in Yesod, as illustrated in Temperance, creates the "will toward rebirth"; so Temperance comes before the Lovers which symbolizes the rebirth itself. The description of Temperance in the Philosophus ritual says:
"It represents Shekinah as the Lady of Reconciliation and Lady of the Pillar of Benignity, intermingling and reconciling the influences of Chesed and Geburah, regarded as cleansing water and saving fire. They are poured forth from two Chalices, which have a meeting point at Yesod and descend thence as a river of life in Malkuth. In the ascent of the Tree this symbol signifies the will toward rebirth, being the last mystery unfolded by the Grades of the Rosy Cross at that point where the world of formation merges in the world that is beyond."
The rebirth experience, symbolized in the Portal ritual, starts in Yesod, proceed by the 26th path and concludes in Tiphareth. The officiating "angel" in the image Waite identifies as Shekinah as a symbol of the Second Birth. He puts it this way in the ritual:
"The benign and gracious being who officiates at the Espousals before you is also a symbol of the Second Birth in spiritual consciousness. She presides over marriages and births. He who has attained to this state of regeneration in God shall draw, my Brother, all parts of his personality into the redemption of the higher nature. He shall raise up his fallen Sephiroth, including Malkuth."
Waite says the symbol of the Lovers represents Marriage, i.e., the "wedlock of the soul and Christ natures." It's this marriage which initiates, or makes possible, the regeneration. The Waite-Smith Temperance symbolism is slightly different but similar in essence. There's the combining of the material and psychic natures creating a consciousness of higher things. In Yesod (represented by the white square), a new consciousness in God (represented by the triangle) has awakened. To me the combined symbolism of the W-S Temperance seems to be that of rebirth, or at least the will toward rebirth. In the GD, as I'm sure you know, Temperance actually occupied the Yesod-Tiphareth path rather than the Lovers.