There was no noise and not much smoking anywhere; March liked going to that neat French place because there Madame sat enthroned and high behind a 'comptoir' at one side of the room, and every body saluted her in going out.

It was there that a gentle-looking young couple used to dine, in whom the Marches became effectlessly interested, because they thought they looked like that when they were young.

The wife had an aesthetic dress, and defined her pretty head by wearing her back-hair pulled up very tight under her bonnet; the husband had dreamy eyes set wide apart under a pure forehead.

"They are artists, August, I think," March suggested to the waiter, when he had vainly asked about them.

"Oh, hartis, cedenly," August consented; but Heaven knows whether they were, or what they were: March never learned.
This immunity from acquaintance, this touch-and go quality in their New York sojourn, this almost loss of individuality at times, after the intense identification of their Boston life, was a relief, though Mrs.
March had her misgivings, and questioned whether it were not perhaps too relaxing to the moral fibre.