it's got to be, let me in!" He
was followed closely by a string of young men and girls, playing
snap-the-whip. They "snapped" just as they reached Jerry. The end girl
flew off and bumped, screaming with joy, into Jerry's arms. He looked
furiously over her head towards Sylvia, but she had been enveloped in
a ring and was being conveyed away to the accompaniment of the usual
squeals and shouts. The Colonel had come down to take them all back,
she was informed, and was waiting for them with the sleigh.

CHAPTER XIX

AS A BIRD OUT OF A SNARE

Sylvia dressed for dinner literally like one in a dream. Outwardly she
was so calm that she thought she was so inwardly. It was nothing like
so exciting as people said, to get engaged, she thought as she brushed
out her hair and put it up in a big, gleaming knot. Here she had been
engaged for a whole hour and a half, and was getting calmer every
minute, instead of the reverse. She astonished herself by the lucidity
of her brain, although it only worked by snatches--there being lacunae
when she could not have told what she was doing. And yet, as she had
approached the house, sitting again beside the Colonel, she had looked
with a new thrill of interest at its imposing battlemented facade. The
great hall had seemed familiar to her already as she stepped across
it on her way to the stairs, her feet had pressed the rugs with
assurance, she had been able to be quite nonchalant about refusing the
services of the maid who offered to help her dress.

It was true that from time to time she suddenly flushed or paled; it
was true that her mind seemed incapable of the slightest consecutive
thought; it was true that she seemed to be in a dream, peopled by
crazily inconsequent images--she had again and again a vision,
startlingly vivid, of the red-twigged osier beside which she had
stood; it was true that she had a slight feeling of vertigo when she
tried to think ahead of the next moment--but still she was going ahead
with her unpacking and dressing so steadily that she marveled. She
decided again from the depth of her experience that getting engaged
was nothing like so upsetting an event as people made out. She thrust
the last pin into her hair and tipped her head preeningly before the
big triplicate mirror--the first time she had ever encountered this
luxury outside of a ready-made clothes shop. The yellow chiffon
came out from the trunk in perfect condition, looking like a big,
silk