The wedding was quite as grand as the Sommervilles had tried to make it.  The street was crowded with staring, curious, uninvited people on either side of the church, and when the carriage containing the bride drove up, the surge forward to see her was as fierce as though she had been a defaulting bank-president being taken to prison.  The police had to intervene.  The interior, fern and orchid swathed, very dimly lighted by rich purple stained glass and aristocratic dripping wax candles instead of the more convenient electric imitations, was murmurous with the wonderful throbbing notes of a great organ and with the discreet low tones of the invited guests as they speculated about the relative ages and fortunes of the bride and bridegroom.  The chancel was filled with a vested choir which, singing and carrying a cross, advanced down the aisle to meet the bridal party.  Molly, who had not been in a church since her childhood, had needed to be coached over and over again in the ins and outs of the complicated service.

Sylvia, seated several guests away from the aisle, saw little of the procession as it went up into the chancel.  She caught a glimpse of a misty mass of white and, beside it, old Mr. Sommerville’s profile, very white and nervous and determined.  She did not at that time see the bridegroom at all.  The ceremony, which took place far within the chancel, was long and interspersed with music from the choir.  Sylvia, feeling very queer and callous, as though, under an anaesthetic, she were watching with entire unconcern the amputation of one of her limbs, fell to observing the people about her.  The woman in front of her leaned against the pew and brought her broad, well-fed back close under Sylvia’s eyes.  It was covered with as many layers as a worm in a cocoon.  There were beads on lace, the lace incrusted on other lace, chiffon, fish-net, a dimly seen filmy satin, cut in points, and, lower down, an invisible foundation of taffeta.  Through the interstices there gleamed a revelation of the back itself, fat, white, again like a worm in a cocoon.

Sylvia began to plan out a comparison of dress with architecture, bringing out the insistent tendency in both to the rococo, to the burying of structural lines in ornamentation.  The cuff, for instance, originally intended to protect the skin from contact with unwashable fabrics, degenerated into a mere bit of “trimming,” which has lost all its meaning, which may be set anywhere on the sleeve.  Like a strong hand about her throat came the knowledge that she was planning to say all this to please Felix Morrison, who was now within fifty feet of her, being married to another woman.

She flamed to fever and chilled again to her queer absence of spirit....  There was a chorister at the end of the line near her, a pale young man with a spiritual face who chanted his part with shining rapt eyes.  While he sang he slipped his hand under his white surplice and took out his watch.  Still singing “Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” he cast a hasty eye on the watch and frowned impatiently.  He was evidently afraid the business in hand would drag along and make him late to another appointment, “—­is now and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen!” he sang fervently.  Sylvia repressed an hysterical desire to laugh.