her plate. She was surprised
at the delight which his leisurely, whimsically philosophical little
speech gave her. She forgot to make any answer, absorbed as she was
in poring over it and making out new meanings in it. How he had
understood at less than a word the secret uncertainty of herself which
so troubled her; and with what astonishing sureness he had known what
to say to reassure her, to make her see clear! And then, her quick
mind leaped to another significance.... All during these past weeks
when she had been falling more and more under the fascination of his
personality, when she had been piqued at his disregard of her, when
she had thought he found her "young," and had bracketed her carelessly
with Arnold, he had been in reality watching her, he had found her
interesting enough to observe her, to study her, to have a theory
about her character; and having done all that, to admire her as she
admired him. Never in her life had she been the recipient of flattery
so precisely to her taste. Her glow of pleasure was so warm that she
suddenly distrusted her own judgment, she looked up at him quickly to
see if she had not mistaken his meaning, had not absurdly exaggerated
the degree to which he ... she found his eyes on hers, deep-set,
shadowy eyes which did not, as she looked up, either smile or look
away. Under cover of a rather wrangling discussion between Arnold
and his stepmother as to having some champagne served, the older man
continued to look steadily into Sylvia's eyes, with the effect of
saying to her, gravely, kindly, intimately: "Yes, I am here. You did
not know how closely you have drawn me to you, but here I am." Across
the table, across the lights, the service, the idle talk of the other
two, she felt him quietly, ever so gently but quite irresistibly, open
an inner door of her nature ... and she welcomed him in.

* * * * *

After dinner, when Mrs. Marshall-Smith lifted her eyebrows at Sylvia
and rose to go, Arnold made no bones of his horror at the prospect of
a tete-a-tete with the distinguished critic. "Oh, I'm going in with
you girls!" he said, jumping up with his usual sprawling uncertainty
of action. He reserved for athletic sports all his capacity for
physical accuracy. "Morrison and I bore each other more than's legal!"

"I may bore _you_, my dear Arnold," said the other, rising, "but you
never bored me in your life, and I've known you from childhood."

To wh