irmly that
she understood. She had always desired him to be happy, to be
reconciled to the beautiful and glorious world; she had tried to bring
about that reconciliation; and she conceived herself to have failed.
And now because the thing had been done so beautifully, so perfectly
(if a little unexpectedly), by somebody else, because she was relieved
of all anxiety and responsibility, Lucia was rejoicing with all her
heart.

He had not been five minutes in the room before he saw it all. Lucia
believed that it was all over, and was letting herself go, carried
away by the spectacle of a supreme and triumphal happiness. She
triumphed too. Her eyes when they looked at him seemed to be saying,
"Didn't I tell you so?"

He saw why they had been asked to dinner. The spirit of the bridal
hour was upon her, and she had made a little feast to celebrate it.
Like everything she did, it was simple and beautiful and exquisite of
its kind. And yet it was not with that immaculate white linen cloth,
spread on Keith's writing-table, strewn with slender green foliage and
set out with delicate food and fruit and wine, nor with those white
flowers, nor with those six shaded candles, that she had worked the
joyous tender charm. These things, in her hands and in his eyes,
became sacramental, symbolic of Lucia's soul with its pure thoughts
and beautiful beliefs, its inspired and burning charities.

And the hero of this feast of happiness sat at her right hand, facing
his little bride-elect, a miserable man consumed with anguish and
remorse. He had never had so painful a sense of the pathos of his
Beaver. For if anybody was happy it was she. Flossie was aware that it
was her hour, and that high honour was being paid to her. Moreover, he
could see for the moment that the worm had ceased to gnaw, and that
she had become the almost affectionate thrall of the lady whose motto
was _Invictus_. She had been forced (poor little girl) to anticipate
her trousseau in order to attire herself fitly for the occasion, and
was looking remarkably pretty in her way. She sat very upright, and
all her demeanour was irreproachably modest, quiet and demure. Nothing
could have been more correct than her smile, frequent, but so
diminutive that it just lifted her upper lip and no more. No insight,
no foreboding troubled her. Her face, soft and golden white in the
candlelight, expressed a shy and delicate content. For Flossie was a
little materialist through and thro