Dorothy Canfield Fisher

“ Marshall, a field of brown stubble, a distant grove of beech-trees, and beyond and around them the immense sweeping circle of the horizon. The very breath of the pure, scentless winter air was to come back to her nostrils in after years.
"Sylvia," her mother went on, "it is one of the responsibilities of men and women to help each other to meet on a high plane and not on a low one. And on the whole—health's the rule of the world—on the whole, that's the way the larger number of husbands and wives, imperfect as they are, do live together. Family life wouldn't be possible a day if they didn't." ”

“ She stopped, aware that the life of the man beside her was one of the unpaid debts so luridly present to her mind.
"Sylvia," said Arnold, hesitating, "Sylvia, all this sounds so—look here, are you sure you're in love with Austin?"
She looked at him, her eyes steady as stars. "Aren't there as many ways of being in love, as there are people?" she asked. "I don't know—I don't know if it's what everybody would call being in love—but—" She met his eyes, and unashamed, regally, opened her heart to him with a look. "I can't live without Austin," she said quickly, in a low tone. ”

“ Felix was right—in America there could be no distinction, there was no background for it.
The scene about them was theatrically magnificent. In the distance Vesuvius towered, cloud-veiled and threatening, the harbor shone and sparkled in the sun, the vivid, outreaching arms of Naples clasped the jewel-like water. From it all Sylvia extracted the most perfect distillation of traveler's joy. She felt the well-to-do tourist's care-free detachment from the fundamentals of life, the tourist's sense that everything exists for the purpose of being a sight for him to see. ”

“ They were interrupted by voices, and turning flushed and candid faces of animation towards the path, beheld Aunt Victoria, wonderful and queen-like in a white dress, a parasol, like a great rose, over her stately blond head, attended by Sylvia adoring; Mrs. Marshall quiet and observant; Mr. Rollins, the tutor, thin, agitated, and unhappily responsible; and Professor Marshall smiling delightedly at the children.
"Why, Arnold Smith!" cried his tutor, too much overcome by the situation to express himself more forcibly than by a repetition of the boy's name. "Why, Arnold! Come here!" ”

“ For an instant, through all her wretched bewilderment, she thrilled to a high, impersonal appreciation of his saying: "If I had stayed with you, I should have tried to take you by force—but you are too fine for that, Sylvia! What you could be to the man you loved if you went to him freely—that is too splendid to risk losing. I want all of you—heart, soul, mind—or nothing!" Sylvia looked up through this clear white light to Austin's yearning eyes, and back through the ages with a wondering pity at the dark figure of Jerry Fiske, emerging from his cave. ”

“ Sylvia snubbed the masculine jays of college partly because it was a breath of life to her battered vanity to be able to snub some one, and partly because they seemed to her, in comparison with the smart set, seen from afar, quite and utterly undesirable. She would rather have no masculine attentions at all than such poor provender for her feminine desire to conquer.
Thus she trod the leafy walks of the beautiful campus alone, ignoring and ignored, keenly alive under her shell of indifference to the brilliant young men and their chosen few feminine companions. ”

“ His gesture, his action had been so eloquent of surprised, intolerable pain, that Sylvia ran after him, all one quick impulse to console. "Yes, you are, Arnold; yes, you are!" she said in a low, energetic tone, "you are!"
He made a quavering attempt to be whimsical. "I'd like to know what you know about it!" he said.
"I know! I know!" she simply repeated.
He faced her in an exasperated shame. "Why, a girl like you can no more know what's done by a man like me ..." his lips twitched in a moral nausea.
"Oh ... what you've done ..." said Sylvia ... "it's what you are!" ”

“ One of Sylvia's most vivid childhood recollections was the dramatic contrast between old Reinhardt with, and without, his violin. Partly from age, and partly from a too convivial life, the old, heavily veined hands trembled so that he could scarcely unbutton his overcoat, or handle his cup of hot coffee. His head shook too, and his kind, rheumy eyes, in their endeavor to focus themselves, seemed to flicker back and forth in their sockets. The child used to watch him, fascinated, as he fumbled endlessly at the fastenings of his violin-case, and put back the top with uncertain fingers. ”

“ How is beauty to be preserved by those who know and love and serve her, and how can they guard beauty if they insist on going down to help clean out the sewers? Miss Marshall, don't you see how I am right? Don't you see how no one can do more for the common weal than just to live, as finely, as beautifully, as intelligently as possible? And people who are capable of this noblest service to the world only waste themselves and serve nobody if they try to do the work of dray-horses."
Sylvia had found this wonderfully eloquent and convincing. ”

“ The workman who had achieved that skill had cut down the whole tree of his life and thrown it into the flame.
Like a self-taught fiddler at the concert of a master, Sylvia's failures had taught her the meaning of success. Although her inexperience kept her from making at all a close estimate of the literal cost of the toilet, her shrewdness made her divine the truth, which was that Mrs. Marshall-Smith, in spite of the plainness of her attire, could have clad herself in cloth-of-gold at a scarcely greater expenditure of the efforts and lives of others. ”

“ His astonishment was immense.
"Look here, Arnold," said Sylvia, with a good-natured peremptoriness.
"Let a girl be something besides a girl, can't you!"
But her attempt to change the tone to a light one failed. Apparently, now that Arnold had broken his long silence, he could not stop himself. He turned towards her with a passionate gesture of bewilderment and cried: "Do you remember, before dinner, you asked me as a joke what was the use of anything, and I said I didn't know? Well, I don't! I've been getting sicker and sicker over everything. What the devil am I here for, anyhow!" ”

“ Sylvia, feeling very queer and callous, as though, under an anaesthetic, she were watching with entire unconcern the amputation of one of her limbs, fell to observing the people about her. The woman in front of her leaned against the pew and brought her broad, well-fed back close under Sylvia's eyes. It was covered with as many layers as a worm in a cocoon. There were beads on lace, the lace incrusted on other lace, chiffon, fish-net, a dimly seen filmy satin, cut in points, and, lower down, an invisible foundation of taffeta. ”