She Once was so Beautiful

    Mark walked into the room.  He could feel all eyes on him as he slowly moved towards her.  The crowd seemed to spilt as though to make a pathway.

    Emily never looked so radianent as she did in that moment.  Her laugh was more energic, more infectious to those around her.  It was the Emily, Mark had first fell in love with.  An Emily he once invisioned an entire lifetime with.  But somewhere she had faded, that Emily seemed to give in to a new.  And Mark could hardly recognize her beauty any more.

    Mark tried to recall the exact moment it happened, the time in which she removed herself from him.  But the more he tried to remember, the more lost and confused in the memories he became.  He thought it might have happened after what was suppose to be a very pleasant visit with his family.  Emily was after all perfect, at least in his eyes.  He was certian his mother would instantly fall in love with her and beg her son to make Emily a part of the family.  Mark even believed that Emily's charm could over power of his father's coldness that Mark had felt throughout his entire life.  But even he could not envision the prejudice in which his family had long instilled with in their systems,  a feeling that had lasted that family several generations but  some how missed Mark completely. 

    It wasn't that Emily hadn't been charming.  Or even closed off to Mark's family, it was the fact that her family was not like his.  Emily's family could not reach the finacial stablity like Mark's. They were not high in society, nor were they well known.  The contrast between Emily Larson's life and Mark Wells' could not have a longer list, something Mrs.  Wells was not shy at pointing out.  Even the mostly non-talkative Mr.  Wells interjected with "She could never raise the heirs to this family to standards they need to reach".  Mark was stunned, not that they had said all this but that this entire conversation took place as though Emily wasn't even there.

    The car ride home was unbarible.  Emily never said one word.  When they arrived at home she walked to their room and closed the door.  Mark didn't want to bother her and figured that if she truely needed him, she would ask.  So he waited outside their door, and as he did he heard what sound like crying.  And yet he never went in.  It would be a conversation that Emily would often want to talk about,  a problem she wanted to fix.  But Mark wanted to avoid the subject, he felt it weighed them down.

    Then Mark thought perhaps it happened two weeks later, when the discussion of marriage was brought up by Emily.  She wanted to be assured that what his parents had said would not be discourage him from the future plans together.  He told her that He still loved her, that the money he made could support them.  He continued on how she could quit her job. But Emily didn't like that idea, she loved her job teaching at the local elementary school.  She felt that her job made her important, and the her children were some how being changed and shaped by her.  Mark laughed "Why?  You'll just be having your own kids soon.  And You'll have to take care of them."