e made its presence known. She felt
very queer, a little startled, very much bewildered. What was that
half-thought fluttering a dusky wing in the back of her mind? It came
out into the twilight and she saw it for what it was. She had been
wondering what she would feel if that silent figure opposite her
should rise and take her in his arms. As she looked at that tender,
humorous mouth, she had been wondering what she would feel to press
her lips upon it?

She was twenty-three years old, but so occupied with mental effort and
physical activity had been her life, that not till now had she known
one of those half-daring, half-frightened excursions of the fancy
which fill the hours of any full-blooded idle girl of eighteen. It was
a woman grown with a girl's freshness of impression, who knew that
ravished, scared, exquisite moment of the first dim awakening of the
senses. But because it was a woman grown with a woman's capacity for
emotion, the moment had a solemnity, a significance, which no girl
could have felt. This was no wandering, flitting, winged excursion.
It was a grave step upon a path from which there was no turning back.
Sylvia had passed a milestone. But she did not know this. She sat very
still in her chair as the twilight deepened, only knowing that she
could not take her eyes from those tender, humorous lips. That was the
moment when if the man had spoken, if he had but looked at her ...

But he was following out some thought of his own, and now rose, went
to Mrs. Marshall-Smith's fine, small desk, snapped on an electric
light, and began to write.

When he finished, he handed a bit of paper to Sylvia. "Do you suppose
your sister would be willing to let me make up for the objectionable
Charlie Winthrop's deficiences?" he asked with a deprecatory air as
though he feared a refusal.

Sylvia looked at the piece of paper. It was a check for fifteen
thousand dollars. She held there in her hand seven years of her
father's life, as much money as they all had lived on from the years
she was sixteen until now. And this man had but to dip pen into ink to
produce it. There was something stupefying about the thought to her.
She no longer saw the humor and tenderness of his mouth. She looked up
at him and thought, "What an immensely rich man he is!" She said to
him wonderingly, "You can't imagine how strange it is--like magic--not
to be believed--to have money like that!"

His face clouded. He looked down uncertainly