he quick tears of sympathy stood
in her eyes.

Her dread of the meeting, a morbid dread that had in it an
acknowledged element of horror, vanished. Before that moment she had
seen only Molly's face as it had looked the day of their desperate
talk, white and despairing, and resolutely bent over the
steering-wheel. She had not been able to imagine Felix' face at all,
had instinctively put it out of her mind; but as she looked into it
now, her fear of it disappeared. It was the fine, sensitive face of a
fine, sensitive man who has known a great shock. What had she feared
she would see there? He was still holding her hand, very much affected
at seeing her, evidently still in a super-sensitive condition when
everything affected him strongly. "She loved you--she admired you so!"
he said, his wonderful voice wavering and uncertain. Sylvia's tears
fell openly at this. She sat down on a low stool near her aunt's
knees. "I can't believe it--I haven't been able to believe it!" she
told him; "Molly was--she was more alive than anybody I ever saw!"

"If you had seen her that morning," he told them both,--"like a flame
of vitality--almost frightening--so vivid. She waved good-bye, and
then that was not enough; she got out of the car and ran back up
the hotel-step to say good-bye for just those few moments--and was
off--such youth! such youth in all her--"

Sylvia cried out, "Oh, no! no! it's too dreadful!" She felt the horror
sweep down on her again; but now it did not bear Felix' face among
its baneful images. He stood there, shocked, stricken, but utterly
bewildered, utterly ignorant--for the moment in her relief she had
called his ignorance utter innocence ...

They did not see him again for many days, and when he came, very
briefly, speaking of business technicalities which absorbed him, he
was noticeably absent and careworn. He looked much older. The gray in
his thick hair had increased. He looked very beautiful and austere to
Sylvia. They exchanged no more than the salutations of arrival and
farewell.

Then one day, as she and Aunt Victoria and Austin Page strolled down
the long gallery of the Louvre, they came upon him, looking at the
Ribera Entombment. He joined them, walking with them through the Salon
Carre and out to the Winged Victory, calling Sylvia's attention to the
Botticelli frescoes beyond on the landing. "It's the first time I've
been here," he told them, his only allusion to what lay back of him.
"It is lik