At least she was sure that he was in love with her, and as she liked
him, that answered. To find a man amusing, agreeable, handsome, and
fulfilling the social requirements of a desirable husband seemed to her
unsophisticated mind to love him. She was pleased with her lover; she
was not insensible of the triumph of having won the attentions of one
of the most sought-after men in her set; to pass her life in the well-
ordered establishment which he would provide seemed to her a decorous
and desirable method of fulfilling the destiny of a woman. She was
willing that the event should be postponed indefinitely, it is true;
and the man himself in her considerations of the future was something
of a shadow; a shadow pleasant enough, yet so remote as to count for
nothing intimately important. She was somewhat less sophisticated than
most modern girls, inheriting that New England nature which is slow to
understand emotion and endowed with the power rather of tenacity than
of spontaneity of passion.
When on the day previous Stanford had come to the train to see Berenice
off, she had been especially gracious. She had been in particularly
good spirits, full of amusement that Mr.
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