gious
opportunity for aesthetic growth, for appreciation of the fine and
marvelous things about her. She let go the last scruple which had held
her back from accepting from Aunt Victoria the shower of beautiful
things to wear which that connoisseur in wearing apparel delighted
to bestow upon an object so deserving. She gave a brilliant outward
effect of enjoying life as it came which was as impersonal as that of
the two men who looked at her so frequently, and this effect went as
deep as her will-power had command. But beneath--unacknowledged waves
beating on the shore of her life and roughly, irresistibly, rudely
fashioning it--rolled a ground-swell of imperious questionings....

Was Felix' perfect manner of impersonal interest solely due to the
delicacy of his situation? Did he feel now that he was as rich as
Austin ...? But, on the other hand, why did he come now and put
himself in a situation which required the utmost efforts for
unconsciousness on everybody's part if not because Austin's being
there had meant he dared not wait? And Austin's change of manner since
the arrival of the other man, the film of ceremony which had slid
imperceptibly over the tender friendliness of his manner, did that
mean that he would not take advantage of Morrison's temporarily tied
hands, but, with a scrupulousness all his own, would wait until the
race was even and they stood foot to foot on the same level? Or had he
noticed at once, with those formidably clear eyes of his, some shade
of her manner to Felix which she had not been able to command, and was
he waiting for some move from her? And how could she move until she
had some sign from Felix and how could he give a sign? There was
nothing to do but to wait, to hope that the thin ice which now bent
perilously under the pleasant ceremonies of their life in common,
would hold them until.... Even the wildest up-leaping wave of that
tossing tide never went beyond the blank wall which came after the
"until...."

There were other moments when all that surge swung back and forth
to the rhythm of the poisoned recollection of her unacknowledged
humiliation in Lydford; when, inflamed with determination to avoid
another such blow in the face, Sylvia almost consciously asked
herself, self-contemptuously, "Who am I, an obscure, poverty-stricken
music-teacher out of the West, to fancy that I have but to choose
between two such men, two such fortunes?" but against this counted
strongly the con