figure
still more completely than is commonly the case. And the honeymoon was
spent, not in the north of Italy, but in the south of France.

There are times when a young girl must have her way. And there are times
when a young husband (but not so young) will determine to have his. I
knew Raymond.

The couple were in no haste to get home. The four months ran to almost a
year. I first met the new wife at a reception in the early autumn.

"Gertrude," said Raymond, "let me present to you my old friend--" H'm!
let me see: what _is_ my name?--Oh, yes: "Gertrude, let me present to
you my old friend, George Waite."

Can a young bride, dressed in black, and dressed rather simply too, look
almost wicked? Well, this one contrived to.

The effect was not due to her face, which had an expression of naive
sophistication, or of sophisticated naivete, not at all likely to
mislead the mature; nor to her carriage, which, though slightly
self-conscious, was modest enough, and not a bit too demure. It was due
to her dress, which, after all, was not quite so simple, either in
intention or in execution, as it seemed. It was black, and black only;
and it was trimmed with black jet or spangles or passementerie or
whatever--let some one else find the name. It was cut close, and it was
cut low; too close and too low--she was the young married woman with a
vengeance. It took a tone and bespoke a tradition to which most of us
were as yet strangers, and our initiation into a new and equivocal realm
had been too sudden for our powers of adjustment. It was Paris in its
essence--the thing in itself--and it had all come unedited through the
hands of a mother and a sister who were so rapt or so subservient as to
be incapable of offering opposition to the full pungency of the Parisian
evangel, and of hushing down an emphatic text for acceptance in a more
quiet environment. I can only say that several nice young chaps looked
once and then looked away. Raymond himself was inconvenienced. Nor did
matters mend when, within a week or so, Mrs. Raymond Prince began to
rate the women of her new circle as "homespun."

Her little hand fell most heavily on these poor aborigines when two or
three members of Raymond's singing-class loyally came to one of her own
receptions. These Adeles and Gertrudes of the earlier day were now wives
and mothers, with the interests proper to such. They had shepherded
babies through croup and diphtheria, and were now seeing hus