derly husbands with their elderly wives beside them, whom they
scarcely spoke to; it must have been a very common, idle thing, but to
them it had the importance, the distinction of something signal, done
for the first time. They staid there till it was almost dark, and then
they went and had tea together in the restaurant of one of the vast
hotels at the entrance of the Park. It was a very Philistine place,
with rich-looking, dull-looking people, travellers and sojourners,
dining about in its spacious splendor; but they got a table in a corner
and were as much alone there as in the Park; their happiness seemed to
push the world away from them wherever they were, and to leave them
free within a wide circle of their own. She poured the tea for them
both from the pot which the waiter set at her side; he looked on in
joyful wonder and content. "How natural it all is," he sighed. "I
should think you had always been doing that for me. But I suppose it is
only from the beginning of time!"

She let him talk the most, because she was too glad to speak, and
because they had both the same thoughts, and it did not need two to
utter them. Now and then, he made her speak; he made her answer some
question; but it was like some question that she had asked herself.
From time to time they spoke of others besides themselves; of her
mother and the Burtons, of Charmian, of Mrs. Westley, of Wetmore; but
it was in relation to themselves; without this relation, nothing had
any meaning.

When they parted after an evening prolonged till midnight in Mrs.
Montgomery's parlor, that which had been quiescent in Cornelia's soul,
stirred again, and she knew that she was wrong to let Ludlow go without
telling him of Dickerson. It was the folly of that agreement of theirs
about painting Charmian repeating itself in slightly different terms,
and with vastly deeper meaning, but to a like end of passive deceit, of
tacit untruth; his wish did not change it. She thought afterwards she
could not have let him go without telling him, if she had not believed
somehow that the parallel would complete itself, and that he would come
back, as he had done before, and help her undo what was false between
them; but perhaps this was not so; perhaps if she had been sure he
would not come back she would not have spoken; at any rate he did not
come back.

XXXV.

Cornelia was left to no better counsels than those of Charmian
Maybough, and these were disabled from