You might have expected, perhaps, that when all the protagonists of the drama had entered the church, the crowd would have dispersed; but not a soul went. We stood, listening to the faint music, and imagining the glories that were hid from our eyes. We pictured the procession up the aisle, with the guests standing on the seats in order to get a glimpse of it. We pictured the sacred ceremony. (There were some who had prayer-books in their hands, the better to aid their imaginations.) We pictured the bride, kneeling upon a white silk cushion embroidered with gold, receiving the blessings of the millionaire bishop. We heard the wild burst of chimes which told us that the two were made one, and our pulses leaped with excitement. All this took perhaps half an hour; and I think that about half that time had passed when I first noticed Claire. I never knew how she got there; but fate, or providence, or what you will, had set her next to me, and that strange intuition which sometimes comes to me, and puts me inside the soul of another person in less time than it takes for my eye to look them over, gave me the warning of danger from her presence. She was a tall and striking woman, beautifully gowned, with high color and bold black eyes—a woman you would have noticed in any gathering. You would have thought at once that she was a foreigner, but you might have been puzzled as to her country, for she had none of the characteristic French traits, and her English was quite perfect. I glanced at her once, and thereafter I forgot everything else—the crowd, the ceremony, all. What was the matter with this woman? What first made me turn was a quick motion, as of a nervous spasm. Then I saw that her hands were clenched tightly, and drawn up in front of her as if she were struggling with someone. Her lips were moving, yet I heard no sound; she was staring in front of her fixedly, but at nothing. I must explain that it did not occur to me that she had been drinking. My country imagination was not equal to that flight. To be sure, since my arrival I had learned that the women of the New Nineveh did drink; I had peered into the “orange room,” and the “palm room,” and several other strange rooms, and had seen gorgeous peacock-creatures with little glasses of highly-colored liquids before them. But I had not got so far as to imagine any consequences; I had never thought of connecting the high color in women’s cheeks, the sparkle in women’s eyes, the animation of women’s chatter with the little glasses of highly-colored liquids. They had so many other reasons for being animated, these fortunate, victorious ones!