On Sunday morning she had curled her soft fair hair, and arranged with trepidation one long light curl outside her bonnet on each side of her face.  Her bonnet was tied under her chin with a green ribbon, and she had a little feathery green wreath around her face inside the rim.  Her wide silk skirt was shot with green and blue, and rustled as she walked up the aisle to her pew.  People stared after her without knowing why.  There was no tangible change in her appearance.  She had worn that same green shot silk many Sabbaths; her bonnet was three summers old; the curls drooping on her cheeks were an innovation, but the people did not recognize the change as due to them.  Sylvia herself had looked with pleased wonder at her face in the glass; it was as if all her youthful beauty had suddenly come up, like a withered rose which is dipped in a vase.

“I sha’n’t look so terrible old side of him when I go out bride,” she reflected, happily, smiling fondly at herself.  All the way to meeting that Sunday morning she saw her face as she had seen it in the glass, and it was as if she walked with something finer than herself.

Richard Alger sat with the choir in a pew beside the pulpit, at right angles with the others.  He had a fine tenor voice, and had sung in the choir ever since he was a boy.  When Sylvia sat down in her place, which was in full range of his eyes, he glanced at her without turning his head; he meant to look away again directly, so as not to be observed, but her face held him.  A color slowly flamed out on his pale brown cheeks; his eyes became intense and abstracted.  A soprano singer nudged the girl at her side; they both glanced at him and tittered, but he did not notice it.

Sylvia knew that he was looking at her, but she never looked at him.  She sat soberly waving a little brown fan before her face; the light curls stirred softly.  She wondered what he thought of them; if he considered them too young for her, and silly; but he did not see them at all.  He had no eye for details.  And neither did she even hear his fine tenor, still sweet and powerful, leading all the other male voices when the choir stood up to sing.  She thought only of Richard himself.

After meeting, when she went down the aisle, several women had spoken to her, inquired concerning her health, and told her, with wondering eyes, that she looked well.  Richard was far behind her, but she did not look around.  They very seldom accosted each other, unless it was unavoidable, in any public place.  Still, Sylvia, going out with gentle flounces of her green shot silk, knew well that Richard’s eyes followed her, and his thought was close at her side.