"As usual with you," she said, "I am unfortunate. I didn't think you would follow me. I came here because I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think. Can you appreciate that?"

He sat on the railing close to her.

"You never want me. I have to grasp what opportunities I can."

He waited for her to rise and wander away. He was prepared to urge her to remain. She didn't move.

"I can't always be running away from you," she said.

She stared straight ahead over the garden, nearly phosph.o.r.escent with its snow.

"Nearer, nearer, nearer," went through his head.

"It has been a long time since I've seen you," he said, "but even so I wish you hadn't come here."

"Why did you come?" she asked.

"Because I thought I should find you."

"Why did you think that?"

"I'd heard Blodgett had been a good deal at Oakmont. I guessed if Lambert came you would, too."

"It is impertinent you should interest yourself in my movements.

Why--why do you do it?"

"Because everything you do absorbs me. Why else do you suppose I took the trouble at Betty's dance years ago to tell you who I was?"

She drew back without answering. Her movement caught his attention. The change in her manner, the white night, made him bold.

"I've often wondered," he said, "why you didn't remember me that day in Princeton, or that night. It hadn't been long. Don't you see it was an acknowledgment that I wasn't the old George Morton even then?"

"Oh, no," she answered with a little laugh, "because I remembered you perfectly well."

"Remembered me!" he cried. "And you danced with me, and said you didn't remember, and let me take you aside, and----"

He moved swiftly nearer until his face was close to hers, until he stared into her eyes that he could barely see.

"Why did you do that?"

She didn't answer.

"Why do you tell me now?" he urged with an increasing excitement.

Such a confession from her had the quality of a caress! He felt himself reaching up to touch the summit.

"Why? You've got to answer me."

She arose with easy grace and stood looking down at him.

"Because," she said, "I want you to stop being ridiculous and troublesome; and, really, the whole thing seems so unimportant now that I am going to be married."

He cried out. He sprang to his feet. He caught her hands, and crushed them as if he would make them a part of his own flesh so that she could never escape to accomplish that unbearable act.

"Sylvia! Sylvia!"

She fought, gasping:

"You hurt! I tell you you hurt! Let me go you--you----Let me go----"

VIII

George stared at Sylvia as if she had been a child expressing some unreasonable and incredible intention. "What are you talking about? How can I let you go?"

Even in that light he became aware of the distortion of her face, of an unexpected moisture in her eyes; and he realized quite distinctly where he was, what had been said, just how completely her announcement for the moment had swept his mind clean of the restraints with which he had so painstakingly crowded it. Now he appreciated the power of his grasp, but he watched a little longer the struggles of her graceful body; for, after all, he had been right. How could he let her go to some man whose arms would furnish an inviolable sanctuary? He shook his head. No such thing existed. Hadn't he, indeed, foreseen exactly this situation, and hadn't he told himself it couldn't close the approach to his pursuit?

But he had never reconnoitred that road. Now he must find it no matter how forbidding the places it might thread. So he released her. She raised her hands to her face.

"You hurt!" she whispered. "Oh, how you hurt!"

"Please tell me who it is."

She turned, and, her hands still raised, started across the terrace. He followed.

"Tell me!"

She went on without answering. He watched her go, suppressing his angry instinct to grasp her again that he might force the name from her. He shrugged his shoulders. Since she had probably timed her attack on him with a general announcement, he would know soon enough. He could fancy those in the house already buzzing excitedly.

"I always said she'd marry so and so;" or, "She might have done better--or worse;" perhaps an acrid, "It's high time, I should think"--all the ba.n.a.l remarks people make at such crises. But what lingered in George's brain was his own determination.

"She shan't do it. Somehow I'll stop her."

He glanced over the garden, dully surprised that it should retain its former aspect while his own outlook had altered as chaotically as it had done that day long ago when he had blundered into telling her he loved her.

He turned and approached the house to seek this knowledge absolutely vital to him but from which, nevertheless, he shrank. Two names slipped into his mind, two disagreeable figures of men she had recently chosen to be a good deal with.

George acknowledged freely enough now that he had taken his later view of his employer from an alt.i.tude of jealousy. Blodgett offered a possibility in some ways quite logical. With war finance he worked closer and closer to Old Planter. He had become a familiar figure at Oakmont. George had seen Sylvia choose his companionship that afternoon, had watched her a little while ago make him happy with her smiles; yet if she could tolerate Blodgett why had she never forgiven George his beginnings?

Dalrymple was a more likely and infinitely less palatable choice. He was good-looking, entirely of her kind, had been, after a fashion, raised at her side; and Sylvia's wealth would be agreeable to the Dalrymple bank account. George had had sufficient evidence that he wanted her--and her money. A large portion of the enmity between them, in fact, could be traced to the day he had found her portrait displayed on Dalrymple's desk. The only argument against Dalrymple was his weakness, and people smiled at that indulgently, ascribing it to youth--even Sylvia who couldn't possibly know how far it went.

Suspense was intolerable. He walked into the house and replaced the coat and cap in the closet. He commenced to look for Sylvia. No matter whose toes it affected he was going to have another talk with her if either of his hazards touched fact.

IX

He caught the rising and falling of a perpetual mixed conversation only partially smothered by a reckless a.s.sault on a piano. He traced the racket to the large drawing-room where groups had gathered in the corners as if in a hopeless attempt to escape the concert. Sylvia sat with none. One of the fluffy young ladies was proving the strength of the piano. Rogers was amorously attentive to her music. Lambert and Betty sat as far as possible from everyone else, heads rather close.

Blodgett hopped heavily from group to group.

Over the frantic attempts of the young performer the human voice triumphed, but the impulse to this conversation was multiple. From no group did Sylvia's name slip, and George experienced a sharp wonder; so far, evidently, she had chosen to tell only him.