e a new volume of Henry James
I'd like to loan you," she knew that the same scene had been in his
head. She would not look at him lest she read in his eyes that he had
meant her to know. As she frequently did in those days, she rose, and
making an excuse of a walk in the park, took herself off.

She was quite calm during this period, her mind full of trivial
things. She had the firm conviction that she was living in a dream,
that nothing of what was happening was irrevocable. And besides, as at
Lydford, for much of the day, she was absorbed in the material details
of her life, being rubbed and dressed and undressed, and adorned and
fed and catered to. They were spending the few days before sailing in
a very grand hotel, overlooking Central Park. Sylvia had almost every
day the thought that she herself was now in the center of exactly the
same picture in which, as a child, she had enviously watched Aunt
Victoria. She adored every detail of it. It was an opening-out, even
from the Lydford life. She felt herself expanding like a dried sponge
placed in water, to fill every crack and crevice of the luxurious
habits of life. The traveling along that road is always swift; and
Sylvia's feet were never slow. During the first days in Vermont,
it had seemed a magnificence to her that she need never think of
dish-washing or bed-making. By this time it seemed quite natural to
her that Helene drew and tempered the water for her bath, and put on
her stockings. Occasionally she noticed with a little surprise that
she seemed to have no more free time than in the laborious life of La
Chance; but for the most part she threw out, in all haste, innumerable
greedy root-tendrils into the surcharged richness of her new soil and
sent up a rank growth of easeful acquiescence in redundance.

The wedding was quite as grand as the Sommervilles had tried to make
it. The street was crowded with staring, curious, uninvited people on
either side of the church, and when the carriage containing the bride
drove up, the surge forward to see her was as fierce as though she had
been a defaulting bank-president being taken to prison. The police
had to intervene. The interior, fern and orchid swathed, very dimly
lighted by rich purple stained glass and aristocratic dripping wax
candles instead of the more convenient electric imitations, was
murmurous with the wonderful throbbing notes of a great organ and with
the discreet low tones of the invited guests as t