could scarcely tell where she might really be, in the present or in
her dreams, which had suddenly grown so real.

On Sunday morning she had curled her soft fair hair, and arranged
with trepidation one long light curl outside her bonnet on each side
of her face. Her bonnet was tied under her chin with a green ribbon,
and she had a little feathery green wreath around her face inside the
rim. Her wide silk skirt was shot with green and blue, and rustled as
she walked up the aisle to her pew. People stared after her without
knowing why. There was no tangible change in her appearance. She had
worn that same green shot silk many Sabbaths; her bonnet was three
summers old; the curls drooping on her cheeks were an innovation, but
the people did not recognize the change as due to them. Sylvia
herself had looked with pleased wonder at her face in the glass; it
was as if all her youthful beauty had suddenly come up, like a
withered rose which is dipped in a vase.

"I sha'n't look so terrible old side of him when I go out bride," she
reflected, happily, smiling fondly at herself. All the way to meeting
that Sunday morning she saw her face as she had seen it in the glass,
and it was as if she walked with something finer than herself.

Richard Alger sat with the choir in a pew beside the pulpit, at right
angles with the others. He had a fine tenor voice, and had sung in
the choir ever since he was a boy. When Sylvia sat down in her place,
which was in full range of his eyes, he glanced at her without
turning his head; he meant to look away again directly, so as not to
be observed, but her face held him. A color slowly flamed out on his
pale brown cheeks; his eyes became intense and abstracted. A soprano
singer nudged the girl at her side; they both glanced at him and