"I don't know that that's it," Jean said thoughtfully. "I feel, at the present moment, as if I could put up a perfectly sound argument on either side. That's the trouble with analyzing too hard, you always come clear round the circle and end in conservatism again. When they stood there, before the God in whom they do not believe, and promised in the old, narrow way, in the form for which they have no respect, to love, honor, and obey, till death does them part, it did seem to be more than a ceremony. For a moment it did seem to reach down below any passing desire, down into an eternal reality. I suppose it's because we have no substitute yet for the old-fashioned God, and so, in big moments, we still stand up and promise things out loud, as we used to do, when we were children, to our parents." She turned suddenly to Jerome. "Would you have liked Alice to go away without any ceremony, the useless ceremony that some day will be done away with?"
"No," Jerome answered slowly, "I don't believe that I would. No, to be honest, I would not. We haven't eliminated it yet and till then it's—safe."
"Safety—and weakness—and a fear-filled age."
"Don't! You make me feel like Methuselah in his last illness."
Jean laughed, but she was glad that Alice appeared just then. As she took the girl's hand in hers, she answered the signal that Alice sent, and her lips motioned, "Don't worry about that. I'll prod."
Then Alice put both arms about her father's neck and toned down the strain of the moment by instructions concerning the management of Malone.
"If it's any comfort, remember that I managed several housekeepers while you were in pinafores."
"I suppose you did. But maybe you've gotten out of practice." Alice gave him a last swift kiss, Sidney shook hands without saying anything, and, with a general good-by thrown among the guests as if they were going on an errand next door, Alice and Sidney were gone.
In the confusion of starting the dance that followed, Jean slipped away and got her things. She had intended to go unnoticed, but Jerome was waiting and walked to the gate. He looked grave now, as if the forced gayety of parting had taxed his pretense. Nor could Jean throw aside the seriousness of her own mood. The wedding had saddened her; against all the logic of her beliefs, against what she knew were her fixed deductions, something persisted, a fine, thin thread of regret, a sense of waste, of loss. A terrible clarity seemed to possess her, as if she could see the indestructible skeleton of all human dependence and weakness, under the conventions and forms with which society had clothed it. And Jean wanted the healing solitude of her roof.
They stood looking out over the empty field before them, each full of suppressed thoughts, each conscious of the other's absorption, very near in their understanding.