e not quarreled with a loved one, and known the pain of the
fear that he may be lost to them, will surely never know the keenest
joy. It takes the escape, the contrast, to make happiness shine out as
brightly as it is capable of doing.

The two men, after conversation had engaged between them, promoted and
helped along by the greater lingual readiness of the ladies, observed
each other. This they did indirectly and as if doing nothing of the
kind. But Estelle, as profoundly uneasy as if she had foreseen already
the fate of the fat to end in the fire, was aware of it. She noted in
Gerald's stiffly adjusted face the unself-conscious eyebrows, formidably
different one from the other; she noted how Doctor Tom, sturdy and
self-collected as he was, kept knocking the ashes of his cigar into an
inkstand full of ink.

It struck her whimsically that she had seen before something kindred to
what was taking place under her eyes: in a barnyard at home, two
crimson-helmeted champions, with neck-feathers slightly risen on end,
standing opposed, ocularly taking each other's measure.

CHAPTER XIX

The Brenda who came back from America was not quite the one who had gone
there. Gerald saw it in the first instant. She had gained in
definiteness, assurance, even in beauty. But a silver haze, a fairy
bloom, an aureole, was mysteriously departed from her. She had left her
teens behind.

Yet in her stainless white, her bridal veil, a slender coronal of orange
blossoms on her dark hair, and the light of love in her dark eyes, how
wonderful she was! That Manlio, pale as a statue with the force of his
emotion, should wear a look of almost superhuman beatitude was only
natural and proper. Of those who assisted at the ceremony many were
deeply moved, and few altogether untouched: to be in the church at that
moment gave one the importance of being accessory to a high romance.

At the wedding reception something of this quality of emotion continued
still to possess the invited guests as long as Brenda and Manlio,
beneath their arch of flowers, stood smiling response to congratulations
and compliments.

It was in the general experience not unlike that part of the opera
where, to a matchless music, the god of flame and the glowing hearth
lauds the loveliness of woman and the strength of man's pursuit; and the
other gods, uplifted, look at one another with washed eyes, feeling anew
how wonderful they all are, how wonderful it all is.