ntensely, was dead. They were sorry for her. That was all.

As an apology for their seeming callousness they reiterated Aunt
Victoria's dictum: "We can know nothing about it until Felix comes.
Let us hold our minds in suspense until we know what to think." That
Morrison would be in Paris soon, none of them doubted. Indeed,
they united in insisting on the number of natural--oh, perfectly
natural--reasons for his coming. He had always spent a part of every
winter there, had in fact a tiny apartment on the Rue St. Honore which
dated from his bachelor life; and now he had a double reason for
coming, since much of Molly's fortune chanced to be in French bonds.
Her father had been (among other things) American agent for the
Comptoir National des Escomptes, and he had taken advantage of his
unusual opportunities for acquiring solid French and remunerative
Algerian securities. Page had said at once that Morrison would need to
go through a good many formalities, under the French laws. So pending
fuller information, they did not discuss the tragedy. Their lives ran
on, and Molly, dead, was in their minds almost as little as Molly,
living but absent, had been.

It was only two months before Felix Morrison arrived in Paris. They
had expected him. They had spoken of the chance of his arrival on
this or that day. Sylvia had rehearsed all the possible forms of
self-possession for their first meeting; but on the rainy February
afternoon when she came in from representing Aunt Victoria at a
reception and saw him sitting by the fire, her heart sank down and
stopped for an instant, and when it went on beating she could hear no
sound but the drumming of her pulse. The back of his chair was towards
her. All she could see as she stood for a moment in the doorway
was his head, the thick, graying dark hair, and one long-fingered,
sensitive, beautiful hand lying on the arm of the chair. At the
sight, she felt in her own palm the soft firmness of those fingers as
palpably as ever she had in reality.

The instant's pause before Aunt Victoria saw her standing there, gave
her back her self-control. When Mrs. Marshall-Smith turned and gravely
held out her hand, Sylvia came forward with a sober self-possession.
The man turned too, sprang up with an exclamation apparently of
surprise, "Miss Marshall, you _here_!" and extended his hand. Sylvia,
searching his face earnestly, found it so worn, saw in it such dark
traces of suffering and sorrow, that t