neighbours made some little pre-arranged speech of an amusing or
emotional nature, she met it with a receptive word or smile,
hardly conscious of what she did or said. Sometimes she freed her
feet from the folds of her lacy train, and sometimes gave Martin a
glance backward and upward over her shoulder, once asking him to
hold her flowers with a smile that several guests afterward
remarked showed that those two couldn't see anything in the world
but each other.

At two o'clock there were good-byes. Cherry had changed the
wedding satin for the cream-coloured rajah silk then, and wore the
extravagant hat. It would be many years before she would spend
twenty-five dollars for a hat again, and never again would she see
bronzed cocks feathers against bronzed straw without remembering
the clean little wood-smelling bedroom and the hour in which she
had pinned her wedding hat over her fair hair, and had gone,
demure and radiant and confident, to meet her husband in the old
hallway.

She was confusedly kissed, passed from hand to hand, was conscious
with a sort of strange aching at her heart that she was not only
far from saying the usual heart-broken things in farewell, but was
actually far from feeling them. She laughed at Alix's last
nonsense, promised to write--wouldn't say good-bye--would see them
all soon--was coming, Martin--and so a last kiss for darling Dad,
and good-bye and so many thanks and thanks to them all!

She was gone. With her the uncertain autumn sunshine vanished, and
a shadow fell on the forest. The mountain, above the valley, was
blotted out with fog. The brown house seemed dark and empty when