recisely in accord with the
facts of the case. The utter strangeness of this in any human
relationship filled her with astonishment, with awe, almost with
uneasiness. It seemed unnatural not to have to pretend anything!

Apparently it did not seem unnatural to the man beside her. "You are a
very wonderful woman," he now said, his voice still but partly under
his control. "I had not thought that you could exist." He took her
hand again and continued more steadily: "Will you let me, for a little
while longer, go on living near you? Perhaps things may seem clearer
to us both, later--"

Sylvia was swept by a wave of gratitude as for some act of
magnanimity. "_You_ are the wonderful one!" she cried. Not since the
day Helene had told her who he was, had she felt so whole, so sound,
so clean, as now. The word came rushing on the heels of the thought:
"You make one feel so _clean_!" she said, unaware that he could
scarcely understand her, and then she smiled, passing with her free,
natural grace from the memorable pause, and the concentration of a
great moment forward into the even-stepping advance of life. "That
first day--even then you made me feel clean--that soap! that cold,
clean water--it is your aroma!"

Their walk along the silent water, over the great lawn, and up the
steps was golden with the level rays of the sun setting back of them,
at the end of the canal, between the distant, sentinel poplars. Their
mood was as golden as the light. Sometimes they spoke, sometimes they
were silent. Truth walked between them.

Sylvia's mind, released from the tension of that great moment, began
making its usual, sweeping, circling explorations of its own depths.
Not all that it found was of an equal good report. Once she thought
fleetingly: "This is only a very, very pretty way of saying that it
is all really settled. With his great wealth, he is like a reigning
monarch--let him be as delicate-minded as he pleases, when he
indicates a wish--" More than once--many, many times--Felix Morrison's
compelling dark eyes looked at her penetratingly, but she resolutely
turned away her head from them, and from the impulse to answer their
reproach even with an indignant, well-founded reproach of her own.
Again and again she felt a sweet strangeness in her new position. The
aroma of utter sincerity was like the scent of a wildflower growing in
the sun, spicy, free. She wondered at a heart like his that could be
at once ardent and subtle,