He was conscious as he sat there of very little pity for the
girl in the other room, of very little love for her, and also of very
little love or pity for himself; he felt nothing but a kind of
horror. He saw suddenly the alien side of life, and the alien side of
his own self, which he would always have kept faced out towards
space, away from all eyes, like the other side of the moon, and that
was for the time all he could grasp.
Once or twice Mrs. Sloane volunteered a remark, but he scarcely
responded, and once he heard absently her voice and Rebecca's in the
other room. Otherwise he sat in utter silence, except for the low
chuckle of the hens and the taps of their beaks against the iron
pots, until Barney came with the minister and the minister's wife.
Barney had taken the minister aside, and asked him, stammeringly, if
he thought his wife would come. He could not bear the thought of the
Sloane woman's being a witness at his sister's wedding. The minister
and his wife were both very young, and had not lived long in
Pembroke. They looked much alike: the minister's small, pale, peaked
face peered with anxious solicitude between the folds of the great
green scarf which he tied over his cap, and his wife looked like him
out of her great wadded green silk hood, when they got into the
sleigh with Barney.
The minister had had a whispered conference with his wife, and now
she never once let her eyes rest on either of the two men as they
slid swiftly along over the new snow.
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