to use his car like a dose of
cold poison." For a moment Sylvia could not conceive why she felt so
sickening a thrust at her heart. She turned her eyes from the speaker.
They fell on a man's hand, on the arm of the chair next hers. It was
Austin's hand and it was shaking uncontrollably. As she gazed at it,
fascinated, he thrust it deep into his pocket. She did not look at
him. In a moment he rose and crossed the room. The husband of Mrs.
William Winterton Perth asked for another _petit four_, confessing his
fondness for chocolate eclairs,--and embarked upon demountable rims.

CHAPTER XXXVII

"_... His wife and children perceiving it, began to cry after him to
return; but the man put his fingers in his ears and ran on, crying,
'Life! Life Eternal!_'"

They had been in the Louvre, had spent an hour with Felix in that
glowing embodiment of the pomp and majesty of human flesh known as the
Rubens Medici-Room, and now, for the sheer pleasure of it, had decided
to walk home. Mrs. Marshall-Smith, endowed with a figure which showed
as yet no need for exercise, and having passed youth's restless liking
for it, had vetoed the plan as far as she went, and entering her
waiting ear, had been borne smoothly off, an opulent Juno without her
peacocks.

The three who were left, lingered for a moment in the quiet sunny
square of the Louvre, looking up at the statue of Lafayette, around at
the blossoming early shrubs. Sylvia was still under the spell of the
riotous, full-blown splendor of the paintings she had seen. Wherever
she looked, she saw again the rainbow brilliance of those glossy
satins, that rippling flooding golden hair, those ample, heaving
bosoms, those liquid gleaming eyes, the soft abundance of that white
and ruddy flesh, with the patina of time like a golden haze over it.
The spectacle had been magnificent and the scene they now entered was
a worthy successor to it. They walked down through the garden of the
Tuileries and emerged upon the Place de la Concorde at five o'clock of
a perfect April afternoon, when the great square hummed and sang with
the gleaming traffic of luxury. Countless automobiles, like glistening
beetles, darted about, each one with its load of carefully dressed and
coiffed women, looking out on the weaving glitter of the street with
the proprietary, complacent stare of those who feel themselves in the
midst of a civilization with which they are in perfect accord. Up the
avenue, beyond, str