Note 61 — Chapter Thirty-seven
Reading edition
... I do not pretend to be adept at the psychology of human beings, but to even the most astute it must have been obvious that in the sunshine of her happiness with my brother Henriette Simpson’s personality blossomed out into something almost unrecognizable from the Henriette we had known before. All her self-assurance, her prim restraint, her inhibited, timid little ways dissolved. She basked frankly and even a little lazily in the warmth of her new estate. She delivered herself up to the luxury of permitting her husband to wait upon her. She became a purring, pussy sort of little person, glorying in the relaxation of her happiness.
My daughter Paula always used to say that mirth was born in Henriette the day of her wedding. For a positive fact, it did seem to all of us that there rippled through her, dating from that time, a stream of good-humored and irreverent levity that was to amaze and delight Henry for the remainder of what was to be their singularly happy and by no means brief life together.