She was a little creature, slender and young and very beautiful, with a beauty which a deathly pallor only enhanced. Her face was delicately cut, and set in a frame of fine dark hair, the whole made most exquisite by the mist of white tulle that breathed itself about her like real mist over a flower. But the lovely head drooped, the coral lips had a look of unutterable sadness, and the long lashes swept over white cheeks. He could not take his eyes from her now that he had looked. How lovely, and how fitting for the delightful youth by his side! Now that he thought of it she was like him, only smaller and more delicate, of course. A sudden fierce, ridiculous feeling of envy filled Gordon’s heart. Why couldn’t he have known and loved a girl like that? Why had Julia Bentley been forever in his pathway as the girl laid out for his choice? He looked at her with such intensity that a couple of dear old sisters who listened to the prayer with their eyes wide open, whispered one to the other: “Just see him look at her! How he must love her! Wasn’t it beautiful that he should come right from the steamer to the church and never see her till now, for the first time in ten long years. It’s so romantic!” “Yes,” whispered the other; “and I believe it’ll last. He looks at her that way. Only I do dislike that way of arranging the hair on his face. But then it’s foreign I suppose. He’ll probably get over it if they stay in this country.” A severe old lady in the seat in front turned a reprimanding chin toward them and they subsided. Still Gordon continued to gaze. Then the bride became aware of his look, raised her eyes, and--they were full of tears! They gave him one reproachful glance that shot through his soul like a sword, and her lashes drooped again. By some mysterious control over the law of gravity, the tears remained unshed, and the man’s gaze was turned aside; but that look had done its mighty work. All the experiences of the day rushed over him and seemed to culminate in that one look. It was as if the reproach of all things had come upon him. The hurt in the white dog’s eyes had touched him, the perfect courage in the appeal of the child’s eyes had called forth his deepest sympathy, but the tears of this exquisite woman wrung his heart. He saw now that the appeal of the dog and the child had been the opening wedge for the look of a woman, which tore self from him and flung it at her feet for her to walk upon; and when the prayer was ended he found that he was trembling.