Among the brides that came back to her memory, she thought too of her darling Anna, of whose proposed divorce she had just been hearing.

And she had stood just as innocent in orange flowers and bridal veil.

And now? "It's terribly strange," she said to herself.

It was not merely the sisters, the women-friends and female relations of the bride who were following every detail of the ceremony.

Women who were quite strangers, mere spectators, were watching it excitedly, holding their breath, in fear of losing a single movement or expression of the bride and bridegroom, and angrily not answering, often not hearing, the remarks of the callous men, who kept making joking or irrelevant observations.