eason for the three-fold clerical roar
which went up upon the heels of her well-meant attention.

Afterwards, in looking backward, that evening seemed to Scott to stand
out as a dream, unforeseen, yet not inconsequential. Nothing that had
gone before appeared to him to be able to explain it. It just was, a
fact without any planning or volition on his part. He had known Catia
from his little boyhood, had been used to her, had counted on her in a
sense; but always he had held himself a little bit aloof from her, even
when, to outward seeming, he had sought her with the greatest
regularity. Early in their intercourse, indeed, he had discovered the
main fact of all those which were to govern their later life together:
that he could not so much talk over things with her, as talk them over
with himself when she was present.

And then, all at once and without warning, Catia had swept in and
dominated him completely, dominated him with her oozy layer cake, and
her two sorts of lemonade, and with her Princeton grenadier of a hat.
Beside it all, he felt himself dwindling into insignificance, despite
the hind-side-before waistcoats of the visiting clergymen and his
mother's gown of stiff black satin. It was a positive relief to him
when he could turn his back upon the whole hot, chattering function,
and, with Catia's new gilt-initialled bag to balance his much-rubbed
suitcase, go striding away to the station underneath the wintry
freshness of the night. Catia had rebelled at the idea of walking to
their train; but the one hack afforded by the village had gone away to
a funeral in the next town but two.

So they went stepping out into the new life before them: Catia Brenton
and Scott, her husband. To Catia it seemed that, the first of her
milestones reached, it was time for her to sit down for a while, and
rest, and take a little comfort out of thinking over what she already
had achieved. To Scott, the first stage of his journey had scarcely
been begun. Indeed, it did not even start from that night, nor from any
night in which Catia's memory could have a share. And yet, asked, he
would have been swift to affirm that he loved Catia; that life ahead of
him, without her for his wife, would be unsatisfactory, perhaps a
little vacant. Catia had always been a part of his environment, ever
since the long-gone day when she had hailed him, sodden in his weeping,
the while he cooled his nether man upon the chilly doorstep.

For nearly tw