“ Sylvia smiled as she spoke, but she meant her last assertion for all that. Hers was an eager, active, questing temperament. She was avid for life in its entirety, with a healthy zest for experience whose sword blades rather than poppy seeds appealed to her just now, as is natural with youth. The college world from which she had been recently emancipated, full and various and strenuous as it had often been, had never fully satisfied her free, quick, young spirit. She had always the memory of those early rich years in Paris with her aunt from which to draw comparison. ”

“ Sylvia's eyes smiled a little, like stars through mist.
"Men do not always understand, little daughter. Perhaps they never understand quite. You must not blame Philip too much."
"Blame! Oh, I don't. The blame was mine. I shouldn't have rushed like a mad thing into the fire to save my pride. I wasn't true to love or Phil or myself or Jack. Maybe I was untruest of all to Jack. He will never tell me, but I know I have hurt him dreadfully. Sometimes I think women are the cruellest things in the world. We don't mean to be but we are." ”

“ Sylvia's phrases came out in quick, uneven gasps, as if every word hurt. "I didn't know--I never knew until Jack told me just now--about Phil. I didn't know," she moaned.
"Maybe Phil was blind too, dear. I think he was. He put an unreal thing ahead of a real one, I am afraid, just because he cared so much. You needn't look surprised, child. Mothers know so much more than any one ever tells them. Of course I don't know what happened in New York, but I have always suspected my boy hurt you, and it was the hurt which made you shut your eyes so tight." ”

“ And Barb was as happy as Suzanne over it all. She was an artist at rejoicing with those that rejoice as well as mourning with those that mourned. Sometimes she seemed to herself to be nothing at all but an agglomeration of sympathies for the rest of the world. Her own selfhood seemed drowned in the sea of humanity. She was not unhappy. Indeed she was quietly, humbly content. To some women to love itself is the main thing. In such the waters of affection returning back to their springs, fill them indeed full of refreshment. There was no bitterness in Barb. ”

“ Sylvia came over to the table to provide herself with one of Jack's bonbons before seating herself on the India stool beside the hammock facing out over the lawn. "Jack is a dear, but I've known him nearly all my life, seems to me, and even to oblige you it would be hard to get up any romantic thrills over him."
"Too bad!" murmured Suzanne, regretfully. "He is so good looking. You two would look lovely prancing down the aisle together à la Lohengrin."
"Suzanne!" Barb opened her eyes to expostulate. "You are so dreadfully flippant. I don't believe anything is sacred to you." ”

“ I am afraid I'll never do anything very big, Suzanne. You and Barb are going to leave me way behind, I know. I haven't any special ambition except to be happy myself and to make other people within my range happy, too."
"You are a genius at that. Remember what Mr. Kinnard said. Don't let Suzanne tease you, Sylvia. You have the secret of living. If all the people in the world wanted to be happy themselves and tried to see that other people near them were happy, why--"
"The millennium would have come," finished Suzanne. ”

“ Jeanette herself was almost feverish in her gayety these days. It seemed, indeed, as if she could not stop if she tried, as if "all the devils of Hell were loose and after her" as Jack had said. She was a puzzle to Sylvia. That she was not happy was apparent, but she was always gay, talkative, full of quick laughter and brilliant plans for new pleasures, something fresh every hour. There were always many men in her wake. Usually they were men of brains, men "who did things," as the phrase goes, musicians, writers, artists and the like. ”

“ One morning she suffered an abrupt enlightenment as to the relations between her hostess and the artist. Jeanette had been detained and had asked Sylvia to go to the ballroom and explain to Mr. Haynes that she would be with him as soon as possible. As Sylvia opened the door he had turned with outstretched arms and an impulsive "Sweetheart, you are dreadfully late." And then his hands had fallen and a shamed, hang-dog, caught-in-the-act expression banished the eager look of expectant joy on his face as he met Sylvia's eyes and saw her quick flush. ”

“ Here was Sylvia Arden, glad, and young, and free, smiling into the future with fearless eyes, challenging experience. Must she too, one day know? At any rate, the hour of too much knowing was as yet afar off. At twenty-two Sylvia was still very close to the jubilant springs. But even as she reached this comforting conclusion Felicia saw the girl's eyes grow sober.
"Felicia, sometimes I think it's a dreadful thing to grow up. Life is so fearfully complex somehow. All sorts of questions jump out and 'Boo' at you from behind every tree." ”

“ Can I be expected to care for you each as individuals? Watch the motes dancing in the sunshine. As the motes to you so you to me. Go look at the sands shining on the beach at Coney. As the grains to you so you to me. Let your eyes follow the ripples of my big river. As the ripples to you so you and all the rest of the human eddies which make up my great tide to me."
Yet there were moments when Barb felt as if she had almost surprised the city's secret, caught it unaware, as it were, and half ashamed, slipping into its holy of holies. ”

“ That night brought a reaction with Phil. He was actuated by a fierce and relentless energy which only work could appease. Hence he came less often to Miss Josephine Murray's pleasant apartment, but kept burrowing deeper and deeper like a mole into the professional soil, working like a demon by day, and studying, reading, experimenting doggedly by night, trying his best to fill his mind so full that the thought of Sylvia could not find a cranny in which to creep and grow. ”

“ So it happened also that Sylvia, being whirled past the two, smiled happy gratitude at Jack over her partner's shoulder, and he knew that his careless kindness to her little guest had scored him a high mark in her favor.
"Jack is such a dear," thought Sylvia. "He is a real knight. I wonder if I am all wrong to try to turn him into a plain workaday person. He is so thoroughly delightful as he is. When men get too much absorbed in their work you can't count on them for the little things, and, after all, the little things mean a whole lot." ”

“ The boy whom he had plucked out of a den of squalor and vice was an artist, and the grim old man who had had a hand in the creation had been something of an artist at the job himself. As for Sylvia, who was behind it all, she hardly breathed until the music ceased. She listened rapt while the voice of the violin sang and soared, now rapturous, now tender, now triumphant, now dying away like the note of a wild bird in the night. She had known before that Gus could play, but this--why this was a thing born of Heaven to which she listened reverently. ”

“ Do go and find somebody who is fresher and younger and less--tired than I am."
At her words there rose to both their minds a vision of Hope Williams' dainty, wild rose beauty and wistful "dryad" eyes. Stephen had been sketching her only that morning in the Oriole Inn garden and every line of her exquisite, fragile, flower-like face and lithe, graceful young body was in his head still. And Felicia had more than once surprised an unforgettable expression in Hope's eyes when the artist had come suddenly into the girl's presence. Hope was young, younger than Sylvia, and Stephen Kinnard was forty. ”

“ In Jeanette's circle, Sylvia saw Mammon worship executed on so prodigious a scale and with such sacrificial ardor it fairly took her breath away. Everything was of the superlative degree. Sheer wealth, sheer elaboration, sheer success, sheer bigness, sheer speed, were all that counted it seemed. And in the mêlée the old-fashioned virtues, spiritual values, ideals, were somehow either dimmed beyond recognition or totally extinguished. Love showed itself chiefly in the guise of passion, often frankly illicit, and in lust frequently but thinly veiled. ”

“ Up to this time, too, Phil had not been sufficiently "on his feet" either to run off with his hostess or even to have the presumption to ask her to marry him.
May in Maryland! Is there anything lovelier the world over? Roses in the gardens, wistaria dripping purple trails from the balconies, waxen, fragrant magnolia bloom! Red bud and dogwood on the hills! Green fire everywhere!
In Sylvia's garden Phil Lorrimer lay stretched at ease in a canopied hammock watching a pair of red birds carry on a lively courtship in the magnolia tree. ”

“ Thus challenged a blond young medical student from the near-by University suddenly appearing in the window, blithely unconscious that he had interrupted anything more than a moonlight interlude.
"Then I'll stay out," announced Jack coolly as Sylvia rose with apologies and followed her captor.
Left alone, Jack lit a cigarette and strode to and fro in the little balcony thinking as hard as perhaps he had ever thought in his twenty-six rather heedless happy-go-lucky years. If ever a man takes square account of himself it is at the moment when he desires with all his heart and soul to win a woman. ”

“ Suzanne laughed at this arraignment.
"It isn't the music of the El, per se that I delight in. That's nearer like the thing it rhymes with. But it's a symbol. It means hurrying human beings, the rush and stir of things. I love crowds."
"And I detest them," groaned Barb. "I'm afraid of New York in spite of all its wonderfulness. It is so big and hard and impersonal. If it weren't for being with Aunt Jo I know it would scare me to bits to live there." ”

“ And then Sylvia saw that Jack was in the room. He had come in while they had been playing and stood silent, waiting until the violin ceased. She went to him, her eyes still full of the music, and noticed that he was a little white and very grave, with something of his boyishness stricken out of him.
"I didn't know you were back from New York," she said, though that wasn't at all what she seemed to care about saying. The ordinary, conventional words rise to our lips when the real things hide unsaid. ”

“ At all events, they listened respectfully, even eagerly, as Barbara Day painted for them her crystal clear vision of a world where women were to be neither drudges nor toys, but honored co-workers, laboring in joyous self-expression, side by side with men, a world where motherhood should be respected and supported by the nation, where education should be open not to the favored few but to the many, a world where war and brutality and slavery, of soul and body, and all blood guiltiness should be impossible, a world enlightened, free, strong, glad. ”

“ Feeling scarcely worthy to dwell in the sanctuary of her own grief, Sylvia's heart went out to the older woman in her silent agony. Perhaps never in her life before had the girl realized what it meant to be a mother--how mothers gave and gave and gave, and suffered and suffered and suffered, and loved and loved and loved, unto the end. ”

“ They were ideal comrades already, and Sylvia had a theory that comradeship was a better basis than stormy passion for happy wedlock. Yet perhaps down in her heart there was a fear that something was lacking in it all, something that kept her stubbornly insistent on postponing the wedding for a year. Impulsively she had yielded the first redoubt. She intended to be sure of herself before she surrendered the fortress for good and all. She meant to do it in the end without reservation, for better for worse. There should be no shilly-shallying like Jeanette's in her life. ”

“ And while Sylvia was intent on her own dreams and quandaries, weaving much she scarcely understood herself into the music, she had not the slightest perception that these hours she gave the young violinist meant anything more to him than to herself, an agreeable mutual expression in a loved art. "Music is Love in search of a word" and if the boy's violin struggled more than once to tell her what his lips would never have ventured on, Sylvia, with her mind on other things, did not hear. ”

“ And in her vision she seemed to see why it had been given her to desire and to have no fruition of desire, to know the flare of happiness and to know happiness gone out like a wind blown candle, to understand what it was to be acquainted with heartache and loneliness. For all these things would teach her how other women yearned and suffered and were denied. If she herself had found her heart's desire in a good man's protecting love, in the warm glow of her own hearth fires, with her own children in her arms, would she have desired so poignantly to help these others to find life more abundant? ”