"Perhaps," said Basil, dreamily regarding the contest of Tom and Bella
for a newly-purchased paper of sour cherries, and helplessly forecasting
in his remoter mind the probable consequences, "there were both brides
and minstrelsy at the hotel, if I had only had the eyes to see and the
ears to hear. In this world, my dear, we are always of our own time, and
we live amid contemporary things. I daresay there were middle-aged people
at Niagara when we were here before, but we did not meet them, nor they
us. I daresay that the place is now swarming with bridal couples, and it
is because they are invisible and inaudible to us that it seems such a
howling wilderness. But the hotel clerks and the restaurateurs and the
hackmen know them, and that is the reason why they receive with surprise
and even offense our sympathy for their loneliness. Do you suppose,
Isabel, that if you were to lay your head on my shoulder, in a bridal
manner, it would do anything to bring us en rapport with that lost bridal
world again?"
Isabel caught away her hand. "Basil," she cried, "it would be disgusting!
I wouldn't do it for the world--not even for that world. I saw one
middle-aged couple on Goat Island, while you were down at the Cave of the
Winds, or somewhere, with the children.
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