He kept her as she was for a moment, then
gave her a serious kiss, and they went laughing through the rocking cars
to eat their first dinner together as man and wife. And Jim watched her
as she radiantly settled herself at table, and watched the frown of
childish gravity with which she studied her menu, with some new and
tender emotion stirring at his heart. Life had greater joys in it than
he had ever dreamed, and greater potentialities for sorrow, too. What
was bright in life was altogether more gloriously bright, and what was
dark seemed to touch him more closely; he felt the sorrow of age in the
trembling old man at the table across the aisle, the pathos of youth in
the two young travelling salesmen who chattered so self-confidently over
their meal.
Several weeks later young Mrs. Studdiford wrote to Barbara that New York
was "a captured dream." "I seem to belong to it," wrote Julia, "and it
seems to belong to me! I can't tell you how it _satisfies_ me; it is good
just to look down from my window at Fifth Avenue, every morning, and say
to myself, 'I'm still in New York!' For the first two weeks Jim and I
did everything alone, like two children: the new Hippodrome, and Coney
Island, and the Liberty Statue, and the Bronx Zoo.
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