them in a white enameled perambulator, and Waythorn had a vision of
the people they would stop and talk to. He could fancy how pretty
Alice must have looked, in a dress adroitly constructed from the
hints of a New York fashion-paper; how she must have looked down on
the other women, chafing at her life, and secretly feeling that she
belonged in a bigger place.

For the moment his foremost thought was one of wonder at the way in
which she had shed the phase of existence which her marriage with
Haskett implied. It was as if her whole aspect, every gesture, every
inflection, every allusion, were a studied negation of that period
of her life. If she had denied being married to Haskett she could
hardly have stood more convicted of duplicity than in this
obliteration of the self which had been his wife.

Waythorn started up, checking himself in the analysis of her
motives. What right had he to create a fantastic effigy of her and
then pass judgment on it? She had spoken vaguely of her first
marriage as unhappy, had hinted, with becoming reticence, that
Haskett had wrought havoc among her young illusions....It was a
pity for Waythorn's peace of mind that Haskett's very
inoffensiveness shed a new light on the nature of those illusions. A
man would rather think that his wife has been brutalized by her
first husband than that the process has been reversed.

"Why, how do you do?" she said with a distinct note of pleasure