ried over to the marble temple.
"You didn't tell me Betty was in Princeton," he accused Lambert.
"Must I account to you for the movements of my wife?"
"Then Sylvia----" George began.
Lambert smiled.
"Maybe you'd better run down to Princeton with me this afternoon."
George glanced at his watch.
"First train's at four o'clock. Let Wall Street crash. I shan't wait
another minute."
XXX
Betty had been right. Spring was fairly vibrant in Princeton, and for
George, through its warm and languid power, it rolled back the years;
choked him with a sensation of youth he had scarcely experienced since
he had walked defiantly out of the gate of Sylvia's home to commence his
journey.
Sylvia wasn't at the station. Neither was Betty. Abruptly uneasy, he
drove with Lambert swiftly to the Alstons through riotous, youthful
foliage out of which white towers rose with that reassuring illusion of
a serene and unchangeable gesture. Undergraduates, surrendered to the
new economic eccentricity of overalls, loafed past them, calling to each
other contented and lazy greetings; but George glanced at them
indifferently; he only wanted to hurry to his journey's end.
At the Tudor house Betty ran out to meet them, and Lambert grinned at
George and kissed her, but evidently it was George that Betty thought of
now, for she pointed, as if she had heard the question that repeated
itself in his mind, to the house; and he entered, and breathlessly
crossed the hall to the library, and saw Sylvia--the old Sylvia, it
occurred to him--colourful, imperious, and without patience.
She stood in the centre of the room in an eager, arrested attitude,
having, perhaps, restrained herself from impetuously following Betty.
George paused, staring at her, suddenly hesitant before the culmination
of his great desire.
"It's been so long," she whispered. "George, I'm not afraid to have you
touch me----You mean I must come to you----"
He shook off his lassitude, but the wonder grew.
As in a dream he went to her, and her curved lips moved beneath his, but
he pressed them closer so that she couldn't speak; for he felt
encircling them in a breathless embrace, as his arms held her, something
thrilling and rudimentary that neither of them had experienced before;
something quite beyond the comprehension of Sylvia Planter and George
Morton, that belonged wholly to the perplexing and abundant future.
THE END
BOOKS BY WADSWORTH CAMP
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