The wedding ring firmly secured, Jason stirred with a feeling of increasing awkwardness. He glared back, with a protruding lip, at the fellow with the young wife, at the small, aggressive group from Boston; and then he saw that Honora was in the room. She was coming slowly toward him. Her expression of absolute unconcern released him from all petty annoyance, any thought of the malicious onlookers. As she stopped at his side she gave him a slight nod and smile; and at that moment a tremendous, sheer admiration for her was born in him. Honora had chosen to be unattended--she had coolly observed that she was well beyond the age for such sentimentality--and he realized that though the present would have been a racking occasion for most women, it was evident that she was not disturbed in the least. He had a general impression of sugary white satin, of her composed, almost disdainful face in a cloud of veil with little waxen orange flowers, of slender still hands, when they turned from the room to the minister. They had gone over the marriage service together, he had read it again in the kitchen at home; he was fairly familiar with its periods and responses, and got through with only a slight hesitation and half prompting. But the thickness of his voice, in comparison with Honora's open, decisive utterance, vainly annoyed him. He wanted desperately to clear his throat. Suddenly it was over, and Honora, in a swirl of satin, was sinking to her knees. Beside her he listened with a feeling of comfortable lull to a lengthy prayer. Rising, he perfunctorily clasped a number of indifferent palms, replied inanely to gabbled expressions of good will and hopes for the future unmistakably pessimistic in tone. Honora told him in a rapid aside the names of those approaching. She smiled radiantly at his father and mother, leaned forward and whispered in the latter's ear; and they followed the guests streaming into the dining room. There champagne was being opened by the caterer's assistants from Boston. There were steaming platters of terrapin and oysters and fowl. The table bore pyramids of nuts and preserved fruit, hot Cinderellas in cups with sugar and wine, black case cake, Savoy biscuits, pumpkin paste, and frothed creams with preserved peach leaves. A laden plate was thrust into Jason's hand, and he sat with it in a clatter of voices and topics that completely ignored him. He was isolated in the absorption of food and wine, in a conversational exchange as strange to him as if had been spoken in a foreign language.