ching the age when pearl grey poplin and
no bridesmaids would be thought more "appropriate."

It struck Archer that May, since their return from Europe, had seldom
worn her bridal satin, and the surprise of seeing her in it made him
compare her appearance with that of the young girl he had watched with
such blissful anticipations two years earlier.

Though May's outline was slightly heavier, as her goddesslike build had
foretold, her athletic erectness of carriage, and the girlish
transparency of her expression, remained unchanged: but for the slight
languor that Archer had lately noticed in her she would have been the
exact image of the girl playing with the bouquet of
lilies-of-the-valley on her betrothal evening. The fact seemed an
additional appeal to his pity: such innocence was as moving as the
trustful clasp of a child. Then he remembered the passionate
generosity latent under that incurious calm. He recalled her glance of
understanding when he had urged that their engagement should be
announced at the Beaufort ball; he heard the voice in which she had
said, in the Mission garden: "I couldn't have my happiness made out of
a wrong--a wrong to some one else;" and an uncontrollable longing
seized him to tell her the truth, to throw himself on her generosity,
and ask for the freedom he had once refused.

Newland Archer was a quiet and self-controlled young man. Conformity
to the discipline of a small society had become almost his second
nature. It was deeply distasteful to him to do anything melodramatic
and conspicuous, anything Mr. van der Luyden would have deprecated and
the club box condemned as bad form. But he had become suddenly
unconscious of the club box, of Mr. van der Luyden, of all that had so
long enclosed him in the warm shelter of habit. He walked along the
semi-circular passage at the back of the house, and opened the door of
Mrs. van der Luyden's box as if it had been a gate into the unknown.

"M'ama!" thrilled out the triumphant Marguerite; and the occupants of
the box looked up in surprise at Archer's entrance. He had already
broken one of the rules of his world, which forbade the entering of a
box during a solo.

Slipping between Mr. van der Luyden and Sillerton Jackson, he leaned
over his wife.

"I've got a beastly headache; don't tell any one, but come home, won't
you?" he whispered.

May gave him a glance of comprehension, and he saw her whisper to his
mother, who nodded sympa