l you.
Not alone from fear of losing you, but I knew it would hurt you horribly,
and I hoped ... I had made up my mind ... I _was_ truly loyal to you,
Harboro, until they tricked me in my father's house."

Harboro continued to regard her, a judge unmoved. "And Runyon,
Sylvia--Runyon?" he asked accusingly.

"I know that's the thing you couldn't possibly forgive, and yet that seems
the slightest thing of all to me. You can't know what it is to be humbled,
and so many innocent pleasures taken away from you. When Fectnor came back
... oh, it seemed to me that life itself mocked me and warned me coldly
that I needn't expect to be any other than the old Sylvia, clear to the
end. I had begun to have a little pride, and to have foolish dreams. And
then I went back to my father's house. It wasn't my father; it wasn't even
Fectnor. It was Life itself whipping me back into my place again.

"... And then Runyon came. He meant pleasure to me--nothing more. He
seemed such a gay, shining creature!" She looked at him in the agony of
utter despair. "I know how it appears to you; but if you could only see
how it seemed to me!"

"I'm trying," said Harboro, unmoved.

"If I'd been a little field of grass for the sheep to graze on, do you
suppose I shouldn't have been happy if the birds passed by, or that I
shouldn't have been ready for the sheep when they came? If I'd been a
little pool in the desert, do you suppose I wouldn't have been happier for
the sunlight, and just as ready for the rains when they came?"

He frowned. "But you're neither grass nor water," he said.

"Ah, I think I am just that--grass and water. I think that is what we all
are--with something of mystery added."

He seized upon that one tangible thought. "There you have it, that
_something of mystery_," he said. "That's the thing that makes the world
move--that keeps people clean."

"Yes," she conceded dully, "or makes people set up standards of their own
and compel other people to accept them whether they understand them or
believe in them or not."

When he again regarded her with dark disapproval she went on:

"What I wanted to tell you, Harboro, is that my heart has been like a
brimming cup for you always. It was only that which ran over that I gave
to another. Runyon never could have robbed the cup--a thousand Runyons
couldn't. He was only like a flower to wear in my hair, a ribbon to put on
for an outing. But you ... you were the hearth for me to sit down