Even the artificial externals of his household had never before so
visibly impressed him. Now that she was no longer in the room it did not
even bear a trace of her habitation, it certainly bore no suggestion of
his own. Why had he bought that hideous horsehair furniture? To remind
her of the old provincial heirlooms of her father's sitting-room. Did
it remind her of it? The stiff and stony emptiness of this room had
been fashioned upon the decorous respectability of his own father's
parlor--in which his father, who usually spent his slippered leisure
in the family sitting-room, never entered except on visits from the
minister. It had chilled his own youthful soul--why had he perpetuated
it here?

He could only answer these questions by moodily wandering about the
house, and regretting he had not gone with her. After a vain attempt to
establish social and domestic relations with the hot-air drum by putting
his feet upon it--after an equally futile attempt to extract interest
from the book of sermons by opening its pages at random--he glanced at
the clock and suddenly resolved to go and fetch her. It would remind him
of the old times when he used to accompany her from church, and, after
her parents had retired, spend a blissful half-hour alone with her. With
what a mingling of fear and childish curiosity she used to accept his
equally timid caresses! Yes, he would go and fetch her; and he would
recall it to her in a whisper while they were there.

Filled with this idea, when he changed his clothes again he put on a
certain heavy beaver overcoat, on whose shaggy sleeve her little, hand
had so often rested when he escorted her from meeting; and he even
selected the gray muffler she had knit for him in the old ante-nuptial
days. It was lying in the half-opened drawer from where she had not long
before taken her disguising veil.