CHAPTER XIII. OF THE WORLD BEYOND THE GATES
Honora paused in her toilet, and contemplated for a moment the white skirt that her maid presented.
“I think I'll wear the blue pongee to-day, Mathilde,” she said.
The decision for the blue pongee was the culmination of a struggle begun with the opening of her eyes that morning. It was Sunday, and the time was at hand when she must face the world. Might it not be delayed a little while—a week longer? For the remembrance of the staring eyes which had greeted her on her arrival at the station at Grenoble troubled her. It seemed to her a cruel thing that the house of God should hold such terrors for her: to-day she had a longing for it that she had never felt in her life before.
Chiltern was walking in the garden, waiting for her to breakfast with him, and her pose must have had in it an element of the self-conscious when she appeared, smilingly, at the door.
“Why, you're all dressed up,” he said.
“It's Sunday, Hugh.”
“So it is,” he agreed, with what may have been a studied lightness—she could not tell.
“I'm going to church,” she said bravely.