e.

Sylvia clung close to her side, taking in through all her pores this
lovely emanation, not noticing whether they were talking or not, not
heeding the direction of their steps. She was quite astonished to find
herself on the University campus, in front of the Main Building. Aunt
Victoria had never walked so far before. "Oh, did you want to see
Father?" she asked, coming a little to herself.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith said, as if in answer, "Just sit down here and
wait for me a minute, will you, Sylvia?" moving thereupon up the steps
and disappearing through the wide front door. Sylvia relapsed into
her day-dreams and, motionless in a pool of sunlight, waited, quite
unconscious of the passage of time.

This long reverie was at last broken by the return of Mrs.
Marshall-Smith. She was not alone, but the radiant young man who
walked beside her was not her brother, and nothing could have
differed more from the brilliantly hard gaze which Professor Marshall
habitually bent on his sister, than the soft intentness with which
young Mr. Saunders regarded the ripely beautiful woman. The dazzled
expression of his eyes was one of the remembered factors of the day
for Sylvia.

The two walked down the shaded steps, Sylvia watching them admiringly,
the scene forever printed on her memory, and emerged into the pool of
sunshine where she sat, swinging her legs from the bench. They stood
there for some minutes, talking together in low tones. Sylvia,
absorbed in watching the play of light on Aunt Victoria's smooth
cheek, heard but a few words of what passed between them. She had a
vague impression that Professor Saunders continually began sentences
starting firmly with "But" and ending somehow on quite another note.
She felt dimly that Aunt Victoria was less calmly passive than usual
in a conversation, that it was not only the enchanting rising and
falling inflections of her voice which talked, but her eyes, her arms,
her whole self. Once she laid her hand for an instant on Professor
Saunders' arm.

More than that Sylvia could not remember, even when she was asked
later to repeat as much as she could of what she had heard. She was
resolving when she was grown-up to have a ruffle of creamy lace
falling away from her neck and wrists as Aunt Victoria did. She had
not only forgotten Arnold's story, she had forgotten that such a boy
existed. She was living in a world all made up of radiance and bloom,
lace and sunshine and velvet, and brig