Now he came back ceremoniously dressed; the rest of the
night was to be in her honor.
It had always been so on this anniversary of their bridal night. They
had always dressed for it; the children now in their graves had been
dressed for it; the children in bed upstairs were regularly dressed
for it; the house was dressed for it; the servants were dressed for
it; the whole life of that establishment had always been made to feel
by honors and tendernesses and gayeties that this was the night on
which he had married her and brought her home.
As her eyes swept over him she noted quite as never before how these
anniversaries had not taken his youth away, but had added youth to
him; he had grown like the evergreen in the middle of the room--with
increase of trunk and limbs and with larger tides of strength surging
through him toward the master sun. There were no ravages of married
life in him. Time had merely made the tree more of a tree and made his
youth more youth.
She took in momentary details of his appearance: a moisture like
summer heat along the edge of his yellow hair, started by the bath
into which he had plunged; the freshness of the enormous hands holding
the manuscript; the muscle of the forearm bulging within the
dress-coat sleeve.
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