ow they both
detested his style of gilded, carved wall ornamentation, although his
chairs weren't as bad as some others. They turned off at the cross-arm
of the Canal towards the Great Trianon; they talked, again dutifully
in the spirit of the place, about Madame de Maintenon. They differed
on this subject just enough to enjoy discussing it. Page averred that
the whole affair had always passed his comprehension, "--what that
ease-loving, vain, indulgent, trivial-minded grandson of Henri Quatre
could ever have seen for all those years in that stiff, prim, cold old
school-ma'am--"

But Sylvia shook her head. "I know how he felt. He _had_ to have her,
once he'd found her. She was the only person in all his world he could
depend on."

"Why not depend on himself?" Page asked.

"Oh, he couldn't! He couldn't! She had character and he hadn't."

"What do you mean by character?" he challenged her.

"It's what I haven't!" she said.

He attempted a chivalrous exculpation. "Oh, if you mean by character
such hard, insensitive lack of imagination as Madame de Maintenon's--"

"No, not that," said Sylvia. "_You_ know what I mean by character as
well as I."

By the time they were back of the Little Trianon, this beginning had
led them naturally enough away from the frivolities of historical
conversation to serious considerations, namely themselves. The start
had been a reminiscence of Sylvia's, induced by the slow fall of
golden leaves from the last of the birches into the still water of the
lake in the midst of Marie Antoinette's hamlet. They stopped on an
outrageously rustic bridge, constructed quite in the artificially
rural style of the place, and, leaning on the railing, watched in a
fascinated silence the quiet, eddying descent of the leaves. There was
not a breath of wind. The leaves detached themselves from the tree
with no wrench. They loosened their hold gradually, gradually, and
finally out of sheer fullness of maturity floated down to their graves
with a dreamy content.

"I never happened to see that effect before," said Page. "I supposed
leaves were detached only by wind. It's astonishingly peaceful, isn't
it?"

"I saw it once before," said Sylvia, her eyes fixed on the noiseless
arabesques traced by the leaves in their fall--"at home in La Chance.
I'll never forget it." She spoke in a low tone as though not to break
the charmed silence about them, and, upon his asking her for the
incident, she went on, almost