Lilian walked down the aisle beside Mr. Eliot, his hawk profile glimpsed out of the corner of her eye, the flag of his white hair, his face smooth and lean, the candlelight bending in his glasses. She walked in a dream, her arm around his, feeling the material of his suit under her hand, and it occurred to her she’d never taken his arm this way before.

The ceremony was a blur.

Afterwards they danced on the stones in the back garden of the Somerset Club. Gilbert placed his palm on her back and took small steps, smiling with his lips closed. Jane sat against some latticework with Jack Ives, neither of them being one for dancing. Dolly tried to get the band to play something jazzy, but their efforts surpassed their skill, momentarily clearing the dance floor. Bobby Putnam seemed not to notice that Arthur was hogging Irene Putnam, and Aunt Tizzy had a splendid time chatting with Emmett Smith, discussing their mutual pals. Madelaine Fenwick was there looking very French, having just been to Paris, and Lilian felt wonderfully jaded that she did not think of Walter Vail till afterwards. It was not such a bad thing to have a past, she thought, especially if one ended with happiness.

In Scotland they took long walks over the hills, stopping on the little rises. Lilian folded some heather into a handkerchief for a keepsake. They visited castles with reflecting ponds and stood in open doorways of crumbling stone ruins out in the middle of drizzling moors.

One evening they were driving back to the hotel over narrow roads and bridges. The sun was down, the sky as deep blue as the glass goblets at the Ritz, and Lilian watched the scenery floating by the open window. She caught glimpses of the bay, then a bank of trees — gnarled bark, floppy leaves — then stone walls, then the bay again. She rested her head against Gilbert’s shoulder and looked up at the leaves darkening. It had not been such a long time ago she’d been alone looking at things, and she could remember as a distant glimmer the keenness of feeling she might have had, seeing the vista of the sea or a patch of morning light on a corner of grass, or stepping out of a back door in the night, and it occurred to her that the feeling now in the car may have been happier, but it was also more dull. Gilbert’s presence beside her, his cigarscented wool jacket, his soft fingers, kept out the harshness of the world and of her feeling shaky in it. When his hand rested on her back in an unthinking way as they stepped up a tumbled path of rocks, she felt transformed, connected back to herself. What softness she felt! And added to that was the fact that everything, herself and the things around her, felt soft, too, and blurred.