Through the iteration of this statement, through the tumult of her own thoughts, through the mad rush of the wind past her ears, Sylvia heard as clearly as though she sat again in the great, dim, quiet room, a melodious voice saying gently, indulgently, laughingly, "_Molly!_"

Secure in her own safe place of favor she felt a great wave of generous pity for the helpless self-deception of her sister-woman.

Fired by this and by the sudden perception of an opening for an act of spectacular magnanimity--would it be any the less magnanimous because it would cost her nothing in the end?--she reached for the mantle of the _beau role_ and cast it about her shoulders. "Why, Molly dear!"

she cried, and her quick sympathies had never been more genuinely aroused, "Molly dear, of course I'll keep out, if you want me to. I'll leave the coast clear to you as long as you please."

She was almost thrown from the seat by the jarring grind of the car brought to a sudden standstill. Molly caught her hands, looked into her face, the first time their eyes had met. "Do you mean it ...

Sylvia?"

Sylvia nodded, much agitated, touched by the other's pain, half ashamed of her own apparent generosity which was to mean no loss to her, no gain to Molly. In the sudden becalmed stillness of the hot afternoon their bright, blown hair fell about their faces in shining clouds.

"I didn't understand before," said Sylvia; and she was speaking the truth.

"And you'll let him alone? You won't talk to him--play his accompaniments--oh, those long talks of yours!"

"We've been talking, you silly dear, of the Renaissance compared to the Twentieth Century, and of the pa.s.sing of the leisure cla.s.s, and all the beauty they always create," said Sylvia. Again she spoke the literal truth. But the true truth, burning on Molly's tongue, shriveled this to ashes. "You've been making him admire you, be interested in you, see how little _I_ amount to!" she cried. "But if you _don't_ care about him yourself--if you'll--_two weeks_, Sylvia--just keep out for two weeks...." As if it were part of the leaping forward of her imagination, she suddenly started the car again, and with a whirling, reckless wrench at the steering-wheel she had turned the car about and was racing back over the road they had come.

"Where are you going?" cried Sylvia to her, above the noise of their progress.

"Back!" she answered, laughing out. "What's the use of going on now?"

She opened the throttle to its widest and pressing her lips together tightly, gave herself up to the intoxication of speed.

Once she said earnestly: "You're _fine_, Sylvia! I never knew a girl could be like you!" And once more she threw out casually: "Do you know what I was going to do if I found out you and Felix--if you hadn't...?

I was going to jump the car over the turn there on Prospect Hill."

Remembering the terrible young face of pain and wrath which she had watched on the way out, Sylvia believed her; or at least believed that she believed her. In reality, her immortal youth was incapable of believing in the fact of death in any form. But the words put a stamp of tragic sincerity on their wild expedition, and on her companion's suffering. She thought of the two weeks which lay before Molly, and turned away her eyes in sympathy....

Ten days after this, an announcement was made of the engagement of Mary Montgomery Sommerville, sole heiress of the great Montgomery fortune, to Felix Morrison, the well-known critic of aesthetics.

CHAPTER XXVI

MOLLY IN HER ELEMENT

Sylvia faced her aunt's dictum with heartsick shrinking from its rigor; but she recognized it as an unexaggerated statement of the facts. "You can't go home now, Sylvia--everybody would say you couldn't stand seeing Molly's s.n.a.t.c.h at Felix successful. You really must stay on to let people see that you are another kind of girl from Molly, capable of impersonal interest in a man of Felix's brains."

Sylvia thought of making the obviously suitable remark that she cared nothing about what people thought, but such a claim was so preposterously untrue to her character that she could not bring the words past her lips. As a matter of fact, she did care what people thought. She always had! She always would! She remained silent, looking fixedly out of the great, plate-gla.s.s window, across the glorious sweep of blue mountain-slope and green valley commanded by Mrs. Marshall-Smith's bedroom. She did not resemble the romantic conception of a girl crossed in love. She looked very quiet, no paler than usual, quite self-possessed. The only change a keen eye could have noted was that now there was about her an atmosphere of slightly rigid dignity, which had not been there before. She seemed less girlish.

No eyes could have been more keenly a.n.a.lytical than those of Mrs.

Marshall-Smith. She saw perfectly the new attribute, and realized perfectly what a resolute stiffening of the will it signified. She had never admired and loved Sylvia more, and being a person adept in self-expression, she saturated her next speech with her admiration and affection. "Of course, you know, my dear, that _I'm_ not one of the herd. I know entirely that your feeling for Felix was just what mine is--immense admiration for his taste and accomplishments. As a matter of fact it was apparent to every one that, even in spite of all Molly's money, if you'd really cared to ..."

Sylvia winced, actually and physically, at this speech, which brought back to her with a sharp flick the egregiousness of her absurd self-deception. What a simpleton she had been--what a little nave, provincial simpleton! In spite of her high opinion of her own cleverness and knowledge of people, how stupidly steeped she had been in the childish, idiotic American tradition of entire disinterestedness in the relations of men and women. It was another instance of how betrayed she constantly was, in any manoeuver in the actual world, by the fatuous idealism which had so colored her youth--she vented her emotion in despising that idealism and thinking of hard names to call it.

"... though of course you showed your intelligence by _not_ really caring to," went on Mrs. Marshall-Smith; "it would have meant a crippled life for both of you. Felix hasn't a cent more than he needs for himself. If he was going to marry at all, he was forced to marry carefully. Indeed, it has occurred to me that he may have thrown himself into this, because he was in danger of losing his head over you, and knew how fatal it would be. For you, you lovely thing of great possibilities, you need a rich soil for _your_ roots, too, if you're to bloom out as you ought to."

Sylvia, receiving this into a sore and raw consciousness, said to herself with an embittered instinct for cynicism that she had never heard more euphonious periphrases for selling yourself for money. For that was what it came down to, she had told herself fiercely a great many times during the night. Felix had sold himself for money as outright as ever a woman of the streets had done.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith, continuing steadily to talk (on the theory that talking prevents too great concentration of thought), and making the round of all the possible things to say, chanced at this moment upon a qualification to this theory of Morrison's conduct which for an instant caught Sylvia's attention, "--and then there's always the possibility that even if you _had_ cared to--Molly might have been too much for you, for both of you. She always has had just what she wanted--and people who have, get the habit. I don't know if you've noticed it, in the little you've seen of her, but it's very apparent to me, knowing her from childhood up as I have, that there's a slight coa.r.s.eness of grain in Molly, when it's a question of getting what she wants. I don't mean she's exactly horrid. Molly's a dear in her way, and I'm very fond of her, of course. If she can get what she wants _without_ walking over anybody's prostrate body, she'll go round.

But there's a directness, a brilliant lack of fine shades in Molly's grab.... It makes one remember that her Montgomery grandfather had firmness of purpose enough to raise himself from an ordinary Illinois farmer to arbiter of the wheat pit. Such impossible old aunts--such cousins--occasionally crop up still from the Montgomery connection.

But all with the same crude force. It's almost impossible for a temperament like Felix's to contend with a nature like that."

Sylvia was struck by the reflection, but on turning it over she saw in it only another reason for anger at Morrison. "You make your old friend out as a very weak character," she said.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith's tolerant, clear view of the infirmities of humanity was grieved by this fling of youthful severity. "Oh, my dear!

my dear! A young, beautiful, enormendously rich, tremendously enamored girl? That's a combination! I don't think we need consider Felix exactly weak for not having resisted!"

Sylvia thought she knew reasons for his not yielding, but she did not care to discuss them, and said nothing.

"But whether," continued Mrs. Marshall-Smith, attempting delicately to convey the only reflection supposed to be of comfort to a girl in Sylvia's situation, "whether or not Molly will find after marriage that even a very masterful and ruthless temperament may fail entirely to possess and hold the things it has grabbed and carried off ..."

Sylvia repudiated the tacit conception that this would be a balm to her. "Oh, I'm sure I hope they'll manage!" she said earnestly.

"Of course! Of course!" agreed Mrs. Marshall-Smith. "Who doesn't hope so?" She paused, her loquacity run desperately thin. There was the sound of a car, driving up to the front door. Sylvia rose in apprehension. Her aunt motioned a rea.s.surance. "I told Tojiko to tell every one that we are not in--to anybody."

Helene came to the door on silent, felt-shod feet, a black-and-white picture of well-trained servility. "Pardon, Madame, Tojiko says that Mlle. Sommerville wishes to see Mlle. Sylvie."

Mrs. Marshall-Smith looked with considerable apprehension at her niece. "You must get it over with some time, Sylvia. It'll be easier here than with a lot of people staring at you both, and making nasty speculations." Neither she nor Sylvia noticed that for an instant, in her haste, she had quite dropped her careful pretension that Sylvia could, of course, if she had really cared to....

Sylvia set her jaw, an action curiously visible under the smooth, subtle modeling of her young cheeks. She said to Helene in a quiet voice: "_Mais bien sur!_ Tell her we're not yet dressed, but if she will give herself the trouble to come up...."

Helene nodded and retreated. Sylvia looked rather pale.

"You don't know what a joy your perfect French is to me, dear," said Mrs. Marshall-Smith, still rapidly turning every peg in sight in an endeavor to loosen tension; but no noticeable relaxation took place in Sylvia. It did not seem to her at just that moment of great importance that she could speak good French.

With desperate haste she was saying to herself, "At least Molly doesn't know about anything. I told her I didn't care. She believed me. I must go on pretending that I don't. But can I! But can I!"

Light, rapid steps came flying up the stairs and down the long hall.

"Sylvia! Sylvia!" Molly was evidently hesitating between doors.

"Here--this way--last door--Aunt Victoria's room!" called Sylvia, and felt like a terror-stricken actor making a first public appearance, enormously surprised, relieved, and heartened to find her usual voice still with her. As Molly came flying into the room, she ran to meet her. They fell into each other's arms with incoherent e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and, under the extremely appreciative eye of Mrs. Marshall-Smith, kissed each other repeatedly.

"Oh, isn't she the dear!" cried Molly, shaking out amply to the breeze a victor's easy generosity. "Isn't she the darlingest girl in the world! She _understands_ so! When I saw how perfectly _sweet_ she was the day Arnold and Judith announced their engagement, I said to myself I wanted her to be the first person I spoke to about mine."

The approach of the inexorable necessity for her first words roused Sylvia to an inspiration which struck out an almost visible spark of admiration from her aunt. "You just count too much on my being 'queer,' Molly," she said playfully, pulling the other girl down beside her, with an affectionate gesture. "How do _you_ know that I'm not fearfully jealous of you? _Such_ a charmer as your fiance is!"

Molly laughed delightedly. "Isn't she wonderful--not to care a bit--really!" she appealed to Sylvia's aunt. "How anybody _could_ resist Felix--but then she's so clever. She's wonderful!"

Sylvia, smiling, cordial, clear-eyed and bitter-hearted, thought that she really was.

"But I can't talk about it here!" cried Molly restlessly. "I came to carry Sylvia off. I can't sit still at home. I want to go ninety miles an hour! I can't think straight unless I'm behind the steering-wheel.

Come along, Sylvia!"

Mrs. Marshall-Smith thereupon showed herself, for all her amenity and grace, more of a match of Molly's force and energy than either Sylvia or Morrison had been on a certain rather memorable occasion ten days before. She opposed the simple irresistible obstacle of a flat command. "Sylvia's _not_ going out in a car dressed in a lace-trimmed negligee, with a boudoir cap on, whether you get what you want the minute you want it or not, Molly Sommerville," she said with the authoritative accent which had always quelled Arnold in his boyhood (as long as he was within earshot). The method was effective now.

Molly laughed. Sylvia even made shift to laugh; and Helene was summoned to put on the trim shirt-waist, the short cloth skirt and close hat which Mrs. Marshall-Smith selected with care and the history of which she detailed at length, so copiously that there was no opportunity to speak of anything less innocuous. Her unusual interest in the matter even caused her to accompany the girls to the head of the stairs, still talking, and she called down to them finally as they went out of the front door, "... it's the only way with Briggs--he's simply incorrigible about delays--and yet n.o.body does skirts as he does! You just have to tell him you _will not take it_, if he doesn't get it done on time!"

Sylvia cast an understanding, grateful upward look at her aunt and stepped into the car. So far it had gone better than she feared. But a tete-a-tete with Molly, overflowing with the confidences of the newly betrothed--she was not sure that she could get through with that with credit.