"Bella!" he murmured, and gazed at her.
The rank-and-file of schoolgirls, giggling, outraged and diverted, passed them by, and the stiff teachers were the last to appear from the church.
"Tell me," Bella repeated, "where do you live? I'll write you. I've composed tons of letters, but I forgot the number in Nut Street. Here's Miss Jackson, the horrid thing! Hurry, Cousin Antony."
He said, "Forty, Canal Street," and wondered why he had told her.
Miss Jackson and Miss Teeter passed the two, and were so absorbed in discussing the text of the sermon that neither saw Mistress Bella Carew.
"I'm safe," she cried, "the old cats! The girls will never tell—they're all too sweet. But I must go; I'll just say I've dropped my Prayer-book. There, you take it!"
And she was gone.
Antony stood staring at the flitting figure as Bella ran after the others down the steps like an autumn leaf blown by a light wind. She wore a brown dress down to her boot tops (her boots too were brown with bows at the tops); her little brown gloves had held his hand in what had been the warmest, friendliest clasp imaginable.
She wore a brown hat with a plume in it that drooped and dangled, and Antony had looked into her brown eyes and seen their bright affection once more.
Well, he had known that she was going to be like this! Not quite, though; no man ever knows what a woman can be, will be, or ever is. He felt fifty years old as he walked down the steps and turned towards Canal Street to the door he had fastened four hours before on his formless visions.