ely
complete satisfaction, facing the sunset, the great arch lifting
his huge, harmonious bulk up out of the dim, encircling trees, the
resplendent long stretch of the lighted boulevard. The music seemed to
rise up from the scene like its natural aroma.

Austin Page came out after her and leaned silently on the railing,
looking over the city. Morrison finished the Chabrier and began on
something else before the two on the balcony spoke. Sylvia was asking
no questions of fate or the future, accepting the present with wilful
blindness to its impermanence.

Austin said: "I have been trying to say good-bye all afternoon. I am
going back to America tomorrow."

Sylvia was so startled and shocked that she could not believe her
ears. Her heart beat hard. To an incoherent, stammered inquiry of
hers, he answered, "It's my Colorado property--always that. It spoils
everything. I must go back, and make a decision that's needed there.
I've been trying to tell you. But I can't. Every time I have tried, I
have not dared. If I told you, and you should beckon me back, I should
not be strong enough to go on. I could not leave you, Sylvia, if you
lifted your hand. And that would be the end of the best of us both."
He had turned and faced her, his hands back of him, gripping the
railing. The deep vibrations of his voice transported her to that
never-forgotten moment at Versailles. He went on: "When it is--when
the decision is made, I'll write you. I'll write you, and then--I
shall wait to hear your answer!" From inside the room Felix poured a
dashing spray of diamond-like trills upon them.

She murmured something, she did not know what; her breathing oppressed
by her emotion. "Won't you--shan't we see you--here--?" She put her
hand to her side, feeling an almost intolerable pain.

He moved near her, and, to bring himself to her level, knelt down on
one knee, putting his elbows on the arm of her chair. The dusk had
fallen so thickly that she had not seen his face before. She now saw
that his lips were quivering, that he was shaking from head to foot.
"It will be for you to say, Sylvia," his voice was rough and harsh
with feeling, "whether you see me again." He took her hands in his and
covered them with kisses--no grave tokens of reverence these, as on
the day at Versailles, but human, hungry, yearning kisses that burned,
that burned--

And then he was gone. Sylvia was there alone in the enchanted
twilight, the Triumphal Arch before