ld aspects of life.

Beyond the window the tawny leaves of the paulownia were swinging in the
October sunshine, and so gay they seemed that it was impossible to
imagine them insensible to the splendour of the Indian Summer. Under the
half bared boughs, on the green grass in the yard, those that had
already fallen sped on, like a flock of frightened brown birds, towards
the white paling fence of the churchyard.

While she sat there, with her prayer-book in her hand, and her eyes on
the purple veil of the distance, it seemed to her that her joy was so
complete that there was nothing left even to hope for. All her life she
had looked forward to the coming of what she thought of vaguely as
"happiness," and now that it was here, she felt that it put an end to
the tremulous expectancy which had filled her girlhood with such wistful
dreams. Marriage appeared to her (and indeed to Oliver, also) as a
miraculous event, which would make not only herself, but every side of
life, different for the future. After that there would be no vain
longings, no spring restlessness, no hours of drab weariness, when the
interests of living seemed to crumble from mere despondency. After that
they would be always happy, always eager, always buoyantly alive.

Leaving the marriage service, her thoughts brooded in a radiant
stillness on the life of love which would begin for her on the day of
her wedding. A strange light--the light that quivered like a golden wing
over the autumn fields--shone, also, into the secret chambers of her
soul, and illumined the things which had appeared merely dull and
commonplace until to-day. Those innumerable little cares which fill the
lives of most women were steeped in the magic glow of this miraculous
charm. She thought of the daily excitement of marketing, of the
perpetual romance of mending his clothes, of the glorified monotony of
pouring his coffee, as an adventurer on sunrise seas might dream of the
rosy islands of hidden treasure. And then, so perfectly did she conform
in spirit to the classic ideal of her sex, her imagination ecstatically
pictured her in the immemorial attitude of woman. She saw herself
waiting--waiting happily--but always waiting. She imagined the thrilling
expectancy of the morning waiting for him to come home to his dinner;
the hushed expectancy of the evening waiting for him to come home to his
supper; the blissful expectancy of hoping that he might be early; the
painful expectancy of