stantly recurring revelations of the obscure pasts of
many of the women whom she met during those days, women who were now
shining, acknowledged firsts in the procession of success. The serene,
stately, much-admired Princesse de Chevrille had been a Miss Sommers
from Cleveland, Ohio, and she had come to Paris first as a governess.
The beautiful Mrs. William Winterton Perth, now Aunt Victoria's
favorite friend, who entertained lesser royalty and greater men of
letters with equal quiet dignity, had in her youth, so she chanced
casually one day to mention, known what it was to be thrifty about
car-fares. There was nothing intrinsically impossible in any of the
glittering vistas down which Sylvia's quick eye cast involuntary
glances.

But inevitably, when the heaving dark tide rose as high as this, there
came a swift and deadly ebbing away of it all, and into Sylvia's
consciousness (always it seemed to her with the most entire
irrelevance) there flared up the picture of Molly as she had seen
her last, shimmering like a jewel in her white veil--then the other
picture, the over-turned car, the golden head bruised and bloody and
forever stilled--and always, always beyond that, the gaunt, monstrous
possibility, too awful ever to be put into words, too impossible for
credence ...

From that shapeless, looming, black mass, Sylvia fled away actually
and physically, springing to her feet wherever she was, entering
another room, taking up some other occupation.

Just once she had the faintest sign from beyond the wall that she was
not alone in her fear of this horror. She was sitting near Austin Page
at a tea, one of the frequent, small, richly chosen assemblages which
Mrs. Marshall-Smith gathered about her. Part of the ensuing chatter on
one of these occasions turned, as modern chatter frequently does, on
automobiles. The husband of Mrs. William Winterton Perth was an expert
on such matters, having for some years diverted by an interest
in mechanics the immense enforced leisure of a transplanted male
American. He was talking incessantly that day of the wonderful
improvement in steering mechanism the last few years had brought
about. "I tell you what, Miss Marshall!" he insisted, as though she
had disputed the point with him, "I tell you _what_, there used to
be some excuse for piling your car up by the side of the road, but
nowadays any one who doesn't keep in the road and right side up must
be just plain _looking_ for a chance