was able to fit
M. Riviere into any conceivable picture of New York as he knew it.

He perceived with a flash of chilling insight that in future many
problems would be thus negatively solved for him; but as he paid the
hansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge
in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the
most difficult in marriage. "After that I suppose we shall have pretty
nearly finished rubbing off each other's angles," he reflected; but the
worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very
angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep.

XXI.

The small bright lawn stretched away smoothly to the big bright sea.

The turf was hemmed with an edge of scarlet geranium and coleus, and
cast-iron vases painted in chocolate colour, standing at intervals
along the winding path that led to the sea, looped their garlands of
petunia and ivy geranium above the neatly raked gravel.

Half way between the edge of the cliff and the square wooden house
(which was also chocolate-coloured, but with the tin roof of the
verandah striped in yellow and brown to represent an awning) two large
targets had been placed against a background of shrubbery. On the
other side of the lawn, facing the targets, was pitched a real tent,
with benches and garden-seats about it. A number of ladies in summer
dresses and gentlemen in grey frock-coats and tall hats stood on the
lawn or sat upon the benches; and every now and then a slender girl in
starched muslin would step from the tent, bow in hand, and speed her
shaft at one of the targets, while the spectators interrupted their
talk to watch the result.

Newland Archer, standing on the verandah of the house, looked curiously
down upon this scene. On each side of the shiny painted steps was a
large blue china flower-pot on a bright yellow china stand. A spiky
green plant filled each pot, and below the verandah ran a wide border
of blue hydrangeas edged with more red geraniums. Behind him, the
French windows of the drawing-rooms through which he had passed gave
glimpses, between swaying lace curtains, of glassy parquet floors
islanded with chintz poufs, dwarf armchairs, and velvet tables covered
with trifles in silver.

The Newport Archery Club always held its August meeting at the
Beauforts'. The sport, which had hitherto known no rival but croquet,
was beginning to be discarded in favour of lawn-tennis; but the la