a degenerate or anything like that ... if he could have found a Stone
Age woman he'd have ... they'd have made a good Stone Age marriage of
it. But he _didn't_, the girl he...."

"Do you know, Sylvia," Arnold broke in wonderingly, "I never before in
all my life had anybody speak to me of anything that really mattered.
And I never spoke this way myself. I've wanted to, lots of times; but
I didn't know people ever did. And to think of its being a girl who
does it for me, a girl who...." His astonishment was immense.

"Look here, Arnold," said Sylvia, with a good-natured peremptoriness.
"Let a girl be something besides a girl, can't you!"

But her attempt to change the tone to a light one failed. Apparently,
now that Arnold had broken his long silence, he could not stop
himself. He turned towards her with a passionate gesture of
bewilderment and cried: "Do you remember, before dinner, you asked
me as a joke what was the use of anything, and I said I didn't know?
Well, I _don't!_ I've been getting sicker and sicker over everything.
What the devil _am_ I here for, anyhow!"

As he spoke, a girl's figure stepped from the house to the veranda,
from the veranda to the turf of the terrace, and walked towards them.
She was tall, and strongly, beautifully built; around her small head
was bound a smooth braid of dark hair. She walked with a long, free
step and held her head high. As she came towards them, the moonlight
full on her dark, proud, perfect face, she might have been the
youthful Diana.

But it was no antique spirit which looked out of those frank, fearless
eyes, and it was a very modern and colloquially American greeting
which she now gave to the astonished young people. "Well, Sylvia,
don't you know your own sister?" and "Hello there, Arnold."

"Why, Judith _Marshall_!" cried Sylvia, falling upon her breathlessly.
"However in the world did you get _here_!"

Arnold said nothing. He had fallen back a step and now looked at the
new-comer with a fixed, dazzled gaze.

CHAPTER XXIV

ANOTHER BRAND OF MODERN TALK

"Where's Judith?" said Arnold for sole greeting, as he saw Morrison at
the piano and Sylvia sitting near it, cool and clear in a lacy white
dress. Morrison lifted long fingers from the keys and said gravely,
"She came through a moment ago, saying, '_Where's_ Arnold?' and went
out through that door." His fingers dropped and Chopin's voice once
more rose plaintively.

The sound of Arnold's precipi