Their wanderings during the year had
indeed been like the flight of outlaws: through Sicily, Dalmatia,
Transylvania and Southern Italy they had persisted in their tacit
avoidance of their kind. Isolation, at first, had deepened the flavor of
their happiness, as night intensifies the scent of certain flowers; but in
the new phase on which they were entering, Lydia's chief wish was that
they should be less abnormally exposed to the action of each other's
thoughts.
She shrank, nevertheless, as the brightly-looming bulk of the fashionable
Anglo-American hotel on the water's brink began to radiate toward their
advancing boat its vivid suggestion of social order, visitors' lists,
Church services, and the bland inquisition of the _table-d'hote_. The mere
fact that in a moment or two she must take her place on the hotel register
as Mrs. Gannett seemed to weaken the springs of her resistance.
They had meant to stay for a night only, on their way to a lofty village
among the glaciers of Monte Rosa; but after the first plunge into
publicity, when they entered the dining-room, Lydia felt the relief of
being lost in a crowd, of ceasing for a moment to be the centre of
Gannett's scrutiny; and in his face she caught the reflection of her
feeling. After dinner, when she went upstairs, he strolled into the
smoking-room, and an hour or two later, sitting in the darkness of her
window, she heard his voice below and saw him walking up and down the
terrace with a companion cigar at his side.
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