I + 

“There!” said Isabel, with a last reassuring pat at Jane’s blue muslin train. “You look lovely.” + 

Jane tried to peer through the bevy of bridesmaids into the tall mirror that was hung on the dim brown walls of the vestibule of Saint James’s Church. They all looked lovely, she thought. They were carrying great shower bouquets of pink sweet peas over their muslin flounces and they wore broad-brimmed hats of pale blue straw. Rosalie looked loveliest of all, and as young as anyone. No one would ever have guessed, thought Jane, that Rosalie was twenty-five, or that she was going to have a baby before the summer was over. Jane would never have known about the baby if Isabel hadn’t told her. + 

Isabel had dropped in at the improvised dressing-room for a private view of Muriel’s wedding dress. Muriel hadn’t come yet. When Jane peeked through the curtains she could see the late afternoon sunshine slanting in at the west door of the church and the wedding guests entering by twos and threes, hushing their laughter as they crossed the vestibule, waiting in silence for the frock-coated, boutonniered ushers to take them in charge at the inner door. The organ was playing the Barcarolle from the Tales of Hoffmann. Jane could hear it quite distinctly. + 

Isabel’s eyes were wandering over the bridesmaids. + 

“Where’s Flora?” she asked. + 

“She’s not here yet,” said Jane. + 

“Was her luncheon for Muriel fun today?” asked Isabel. + 

“Yes,” said Jane. + 

“Was Mrs. Furness there?” Isabel lowered her voice. + 

“No,” said Jane. She had been sorry not to see Flora’s mother. Jane had hardly had a glimpse of her all spring. She had carried Flora off to St. Augustine immediately after Christmas and when they returned in February she had left town again at once, to visit her sister-in-law, Stephen Carver’s mother, in Boston. Stephen had said she had been very gay there. She looked tired, Jane had thought, when she came home. + 

“I do wonder⁠—” began Isabel. + 

Her voice was a mere murmur. Jane moved away from her a little impatiently. She knew very well what Isabel wondered. Isabel and her mother had been wondering it all week. So had lots of other people, to judge from the wealth of opinion that they had managed to quote on the question. Would Flora’s mother come to Muriel’s wedding? Would she walk up the aisle at her husband’s side and take her place in the pew reserved for Flora’s family to see Muriel marry Mr. Bert Lancaster? Isabel had been inclined to think that she would never have the nerve to do it. Jane’s mother had declared that you could always do what you had to do, and that she would be very much surprised if Lily Furness didn’t carry it all off beautifully. + 

For Jane this continued speculation had quite spoiled the wedding. Other things had spoiled it, too, of course. The parties before it hadn’t been so very gay. The ushers were all old men, for one thing, not one under thirty-five. And for another, Mrs. Lester, who was usually so jolly and easygoing, had never succeeded in looking really happy about it. She never seemed to achieve with Mr. Bert Lancaster the comfortable maternal approach that she had with Freddy Waters and her son-in-law from Cleveland. Freddy Waters was in the wedding party. All the ushers but one were married. No, the parties hadn’t been so very gay. + 

“Here’s Muriel now!” cried Isabel eagerly. The bridesmaids all turned from the mirror. Here was Muriel indeed, a transfigured, preoccupied Muriel, trailing great lengths of stiff white satin, her cloudy hair hidden beneath the formal folds of her mother’s lace wedding veil. + 

“Look out for my train!” was the first thing that Jane heard her say. She was speaking to the maid who was carrying it very carefully over the red velvet carpet. + 

Mrs. Lester and Edith and Edith’s husband followed her into the dressing-room. Edith’s husband was going to give Muriel away. Old Solomon Lester was too infirm, now, to make the trip from New York to his granddaughter’s wedding. Jane’s mother and Isabel had thought his recent stroke a merciful intervention of Providence. It would be a relief, they said, to have one Lester wedding that was free from the taint of the synagogue. + 

Mrs. Lester stood silently by Muriel’s elbow, adjusting the wreath of orange blossoms that held the veil in place. Mrs. Lester was growing old, thought Jane. She had on a beautiful gown of wine-colored silk, but her face looked very worn and tired. + 

The bridesmaids made an aisle so that Muriel could look in the mirror. She stood quite still and straight, smiling into the glass. Edith and Rosalie and the maid began to arrange the long folds of the satin train. Muriel’s gloved hands were clasped on a white vellum prayer book. The third finger of the left glove was slit, so that Mr. Lancaster could slip on her wedding ring. + 

Jane felt very solemn as she looked at her. She thought of all the years that she had known Muriel. She couldn’t remember the time, really, before she had known her. In a way this was worse than Isabel’s wedding. Isabel had been twenty-three. Her big sister. And Jane had loved Robin. Muriel was⁠—just Muriel. A kid, really, like Jane herself. And yet she was getting married. To Mr. Bert Lancaster. It all seemed very sad and terribly irrevocable. It would be dreadful to be getting married, thought Jane. + 

Muriel turned from the mirror. + 

“See my pearls, girls,” she said brightly. “Aren’t they lovely? Bert sent them this morning.” + 

Jane winked away her tears. The bridesmaids circled about the pearls with little cries of admiration. + 

“I must go,” said Isabel. She kissed Muriel and turned toward the curtain. Flora was just coming in. Jane caught a glimpse of Mr. Furness standing alone in the outer vestibule beyond. Isabel joined him. + 

“How lovely Flora looks!” said Isabel brightly. “What a beautiful day for a wedding!” They turned toward the church door in the slanting sunshine. Jane wasn’t deceived for a moment by Isabel’s airy inconsequence. Jane knew that before Isabel sank decorously on her knees beside her mother in the third left-hand pew, she would whisper that Mrs. Furness hadn’t come. + 

Edith was kissing Muriel, when Jane turned around. + 

“Come, Mother,” she said. + 

Mrs. Lester took Muriel in her arms. Mrs. Lester was frankly crying. + 

“Don’t muss her veil!” cried Rosalie. + 

Mrs. Lester relinquished her daughter. Rosalie rearranged Muriel’s draperies. The Cleveland brother-in-law offered his arm. + 

“How’s your nerve?” he asked cheerfully. + 

“Fine!” said Muriel. Her eyes were dancing behind the folds of white lace. Her cheeks were very pink. + 

“Come, Mother,” said Edith again. They turned toward the church door. + 

Jane fell into line with Flora. They were to be the first pair of bridesmaids. The ushers were lining up in the vestibule. The one in front of Jane was quite bald. He had one absurd long brown lock of hair, combed carefully over the thin place on top of his head. Flora nodded at it and nudged Jane’s arm and giggled. The organ throbbed forth a solemn premonitory strain. The ushers began to move slowly through the inner door. The first notes of the Lohengrin wedding march swelled out over the heads of the congregation. + 

Jane and Flora walked very slowly, keeping their distance carefully from the ushers in front of them. Jane held her head very high and her shower bouquet very stiffly so her hands wouldn’t tremble. The church looked very dark, after the afternoon sunshine, and the aisle very long indeed. Over the heads of the ushers Jane could see the green palms and the white Easter lilies and the twinkling candles of the altar. They seemed very far away. + 

The pews were crowded with people, all rustling and moving and craning their necks to look at the wedding party as it went by. Jane suddenly remembered the Commencement procession in the Bryn Mawr chapel. She turned her head very slightly, half expecting to see Agnes’s funny freckled face under a black mortarboard at her side. But no. There was Flora’s pure pale profile beneath the blue straw hat-brim. Her lips were curved, just the least little bit, in a self-conscious smile. Her step was a trifle unsteady. Jane felt her own smile growing set and strained and her own knees wobbling disconcertingly. It was hard to walk so slowly, with so many people staring. + 

Suddenly she noticed Mr. Bert Lancaster. He was standing with the best man at the left hand of old Dr. Winter, the clergyman, on the chancel steps. He looked very calm and handsome, just as he always did. Just as Jane had seen him look at innumerable other weddings, that were not his own. The ushers were forming in two rows along the chancel steps. Jane and Flora passed them slowly, separated and took their places at the head of the line. Jane could see Muriel now. Her head was bowed under the white lace veil. At the chancel steps she raised it suddenly and smiled at Mr. Bert Lancaster. Mr. Lancaster wheeled to face the clergyman. Jane could see both their faces now, upturned toward the altar. They were so near her that it seemed indecent to look at them, at such a moment. Jane turned away her eyes. + 

The organ sobbed and throbbed and sank into silence. The voice of the clergyman could be distinctly heard. + 

“Dearly beloved brethren, we are met together in the sight of God and this company to join together this man and this woman in the holy estate of matrimony⁠—” + 

“This woman,” thought Jane. Muriel was a woman, of course, not a kid any longer. Muriel was twenty. Jane would be twenty, herself, next month. Flora was twenty-one. They were grown up, all of them. Capable of entering the holy estate of matrimony, if, and when, they chose. Mrs. Lester had hated this marriage. But she hadn’t stopped it. She couldn’t stop Muriel. Nevertheless, Jane knew that if Muriel had been her mother’s child something would have been done. Still⁠—Jane wondered. Muriel was⁠—Muriel. Greek would have met Greek. Jane’s mother, at any rate, Jane knew very well, would always prevent Jane from doing anything that she didn’t think was wise. But who, Jane wondered, was the best judge of wisdom? Didn’t you know yourself, really, better than anyone, what you really wanted, what was the real right thing for you? + 

André⁠—Jane knew, now, of course, that the family couldn’t have let her marry him at seventeen. She couldn’t even imagine, now, what their life would have been together, what her life would have been without all those other experiences that had crowded into it since she had closed the door on that early romance. Bryn Mawr and all the things she had learned there. Agnes and Marion and, yes, Miss Thomas, with her flaming torch of enlightenment, and that gay, carefree life in Pembroke Hall. The beauty of the Bryn Mawr countryside. This last year, too, with its funny frivolities, its social amenities, its growing friendships with people that Jane knew, really, in her heart of hearts, were awfully unlike herself. All those experiences were part of her, now. Inalienable. Not ever to be ignored, or belittled, or set lightly aside. + 

But, nevertheless, there was the memory of that incredible joy of companionship that she had known with André. That identity of interest, that tremulous sense of intimacy, that glorious dawning of emotion. + 

The sound of Muriel’s voice roused her from revery. + 

“I, Muriel, take thee, Albert, for my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward⁠—” + 

“From this day forward”⁠—solemn, irrevocable words. How could Muriel say them? Some marriages lasted for fifty years. How could anyone say them? How could she have been so sure, so very sure, with André? She hadn’t thought about the fifty years at all. Jane felt quite certain it was just because she had been seventeen. She hadn’t reflected. She hadn’t considered. She would never feel like that, thought Jane with a little shiver, about anyone ever again. + 

The ring was being slipped on Muriel’s finger. Mr. Lancaster’s firm voice rang out in those irrelevant words about his worldly goods. Jane had always considered them a blot on the wedding service. The clergyman was uttering his last solemn adjuration. + 

“Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” + 

The organ was tuning up with the first shrill pipes of the Mendelssohn wedding march. Muriel, her veil thrown back from her lovely flushed face, had turned, on Mr. Lancaster’s arm, to walk down the aisle. Rosalie and the best man had fallen in behind them. Jane and Flora turned smartly to move in their turn. The organ pealed joyously on. High up above their heads the chimes in the steeple were ringing. The march down the aisle was executed much more quickly. Jane kept recognizing the faces turned up to her, from the aisle seats of pews. She smiled and nodded gaily as she went. The recessional had taken on a very festal air. All sense of solemnity was lost. + 

Jane caught a glimpse of Stephen Carver, staring at her face from his seat beside Mr. Furness. She almost laughed, he looked so very serious. He smiled back, just as he passed from her field of vision. The church doors were open. The vestibule was a confusion of bridesmaids. Great crowds of people were pressing against the awning to see the wedding party come out. Jane jumped into a waiting hansom with Flora. They must hurry over to the reception. Jane wanted, awfully, to give Muriel a great hug for luck. She wanted to stand in line and laugh and be gay and talk to all the people. Weddings were fun, always, if you could just forget the ceremony. Jane felt she had forgotten it. And Flora was chattering gaily about the bridesmaids’ dresses. Flora was so glad they were blue. She was going to take out the yoke and turn hers into an evening gown. The cab drew up at Muriel’s door. There was another crowd around this second awning. Jane and Flora ran quickly, hand in hand, up over the red carpet. + 

Muriel and Mr. Lancaster were standing, side by side, under a great bell of smilax. No one had come, yet, but the ushers and bridesmaids. Jane flung her arms around Muriel in a great rush of feeling. Muriel looked perfectly lovely. Jane almost kissed Mr. Lancaster in the strength of her enthusiasm. But not quite. + 