She tried to hold on to the airy feeling. In the mornings with the dew wet on the wrought-iron spikes by the doorways, and filled with a new energy, she walked down Beacon Hill and across the street to the Public Garden. She went along the meandering path, past clipped flower beds and statues — men on horseback, soldiers — around the pond dotted with ducks. The swan boats with their winged sides were shut away for the winter. At the southern gates, she saw the uniformed porters blowing whistles outside the Ritz. The last time she’d been there was for Sis Sedgwick’s wedding one chilly day in April, before she’d known Gilbert really, and she felt less in common with the girl she’d been then than with the strangers she watched in foreign coats and bright makeup ducking into cars beneath the hotel awning. She moved briskly along her route, crossing the street to the Common where the grass was less tended; there were more people here, and the trees towered above the esplanade. Through the leaves she could see the dome of the State House with its pounded gold surface. She thought idly of Emerson and the feeling of perpetual youth he’d experienced crossing the Common at twilight with the snow puddles. But mostly her mind was empty of the usual things — that is, she thought of Gilbert. She thought of how they were married. She could think of that in various ways for a long time. She thought of his briefcase snapping closed in the morning when he headed off for work on Milk Street. She thought of his coat bunched at his shoulders. She pictured his ties hanging on the tie rack in their room and thought of their bed, and of how he would sometimes turn to her at night and sometimes not, and thinking this way she would find herself back on Joy Street without having noticed where she’d walked.

But Boston was not so changed and the old things trickled back in with peculiar effect.