His helplessness included the subject of her remarks; he would, he realized, be at James Polder’s wedding, but he persisted in his opinion.  “A low piece of business,” Howat declared.  When she had gone he felt that he had not penetrated her actual attitude toward Polder’s deflection.  He had not for a moment got beneath her casual manner, her lightness, pretended or actual.  He wished vehemently that he were back again in the past he comprehended, among the familiar figures that had thronged the notable dinner to Patti, the women who had floated so graciously through the poetry of departed waltzes.  He got out his albums once more, scrutinized through his polished glass the programmes of evenings famous in song.  But he went to bed a full two hours earlier than customary; his feet positively dragged up the stairs; above he sat strangely exhausted, breathing heavily for, apparently, no reason whatever.

He retraced, with Mariana, the course over the broad, asphalt way into the north end of the city early on the evening of the thirtieth.  They found the church easily, by reason of a striped canvas tunnel stretched out to the curb; and a young man with plastered hair and a gardenia led them, Mariana on his arm, to a place on the centre aisle.  The church had a high nave newly vaulted in maple, and stained glass windows draped with smilax, garish in colour against electric lights.  Above the altar a great illuminated cross maintained an unsteady flickering; and—­it was unseasonably cold—­heating steam pipes gave out an expanding racket.

The pews through the centre filled rapidly; there was a low, excited chatter of voices, and a spreading tropical expanse of the dyed feathers and iridescent foliage of womens’ hats.  An overpowering scent of mingled perfumes rose and filled the interior.  The strains of an organ grew audible, contesting with the rattle of the steam pipes.  Howat Penny was detached, critical.  Mariana, in a dull, black satin wrap of innumerable soft folds and wide paisley collar slipping from a sheath-like bodice of gleaming, cut steel beading, was silent, incurious.  He turned to her, to point out an extravagant figure, but he said nothing.  She was, evidently, in no mood for the enjoyment of the ridiculous.  This disturbed him; he had not thought that she would be so—­so concerned.  He suppressed an impatient exclamation, and returned to the scrutiny of the culminating ceremony.

Here was a sphere, vastly larger than his own, to the habits and prejudices of which he was complete stranger.  It was as James Polder had said—­as if one or the other spoke Patagonian.  He had no wish to acquire the language about him; a positive antagonism to his surrounding possessed him, beyond reason.  He thought—­how different Mariana is from all this, and was annoyed again at her serious bearing.  Then he was surprised by his presence there at all; confound the girl, why didn’t she play with her own kind!  Yet only the other day the glimpse she had given him of her natural associates had filled him with dread.  His mind, striving to encompass the problem of Mariana’s existence, failed to overcome the walls built about him by time, by habit.  He gave it up.  The louder pealing of the organ announced immediate developments.