over the reason now. She had already delayed too long ere moving
forward.

Yet even calm reflection would not have revealed the right answer to the
problem. How could she have suspected that what stirred her passionate
soul so fiercely was grief at the sight of the man whom she had regarded
as the stronghold of integrity, the possessor of the firmest will, the
soul of inviolable fidelity, succumbing here, before the eyes of all,
like a dissolute weakling, to the seductive arts of an immature kobold?
These two, who gave to her, the orphaned vagrant, surrounded by unbridled
recklessness, physical and mental misery, a proof that there was still in
marriage real love and a happiness secure from every assault, were now,
before her eyes, placing themselves on the same plane with the miserable
couples whom she met everywhere. She could not have expressed her
emotions in words, but she vaguely felt that the world had become poorer,
and that henceforth she must think of something more trivial when she
tried to imagine the pure happiness which mortals are permitted to enjoy.
She had seen the blossoms stripped from the scanty remnant of her faith
in truth and goodness, which had begun to bloom afresh in her heart
through the characters of this pair whose marriage procession she had
watched.

Loni had been beckoning a long time; now he waved his gay handkerchief
still more impatiently, and she moved on.

Her lips forced themselves into the customary smile with difficulty.
Tripping forward was an easy matter for one so free from dizziness. She
only carried the pole because it was customary to begin with the least
difficult feats. Yet, while gracefully placing one foot before the
other, she said to herself--safe as she felt--that, while so much