Nevertheless Angela was sweet to him. Hers was a loving disposition and Eugene was the be all and end all of her love. His figure was of heroic proportions to her. His talent was divine fire. No one could know as much as Eugene, of course! No one could be as artistic. True, he was not as practical as some men--her brothers and brothers-in-law, for instance--but he was a man of genius. Why should he be practical? She was beginning to think already of how thoroughly she would help him shape his life toward success--what a good wife she would be to him. Her training as a teacher, her experience as a buyer, her practical judgment, would help him so much. They spent the two hours before dinner in renewed transports and then dressed and made their public appearance. Angela had had designed a number of dresses for this occasion, representing the saving of years, and tonight at dinner she looked exceptionally pretty in a dress of black silk with neck piece and half sleeves of mother-of-pearl silk, set off with a decoration of seed pearls and black beads in set designs. Marietta, in a pale pink silk of peachblow softness of hue with short sleeves and a low cut bodice was, with all her youth and natural plumpness and gaiety of soul, ravishing. Now that she had Angela safely married, she was under no obligations to keep out of Eugene's way nor to modify her charms in order that her sister's might shine. She was particularly ebullient in her mood and Eugene could not help contrasting, even in this hour, the qualities of the two sisters. Marietta's smile, her humor, her unconscious courage, contrasted so markedly with Angela's quietness. The luxuries of the modern hotel have become the commonplaces of ordinary existence, but to the girls they were still strange enough to be impressive. To Angela they were a foretaste of what was to be an enduring higher life. These carpets, hangings, elevators, waiters, seemed in their shabby materialism to speak of superior things. One day in Buffalo, with a view of the magnificent falls at Niagara, and then came West Point with a dress parade accidentally provided for a visiting general and a ball for the cadets. Marietta, because of her charm and her brother's popularity, found herself so much in demand at West Point that she extended her stay to a week, leaving Eugene and Angela free to come to New York together and have a little time to themselves. They only stayed long enough to see Marietta safely housed and then came to the city and the apartment in Washington Square.