her, the swept and garnished and
spangled city beneath her. She lifted her hand and saw that he had
left on it not only kisses but tears. If he had been there then, she
would have thrown herself into his arms.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

SYLVIA COMES TO THE WICKET-GATE

Three weeks passed before his letter came. The slow, thrilling
crescendo of May had lifted the heart up to a devout certainty of
June. The leaves were fully out, casting a light, new shadow on the
sprinkled streets. Every woman was in a bright-colored, thin summer
dress, and every young woman looked alluring. The young men wore their
hats tilted to one side, swung jaunty canes as they walked, and peered
hopefully under the brim of every flowered feminine headdress.
The days were like golden horns of plenty, spilling out sunshine,
wandering perfumed airs, and the heart-quickening aroma of the new
season. The nights were cool and starry. Every one in Paris spent as
much as possible of every hour out of doors. The pale-blue sky flecked
with creamy clouds seemed the dome, and the city the many-colored
pavement of some vast building, so grandly spacious that the
sauntering, leisurely crowds thronging the thoroughfares seemed no
crowds at all, but only denoted a delightful sociability.

All the spring vegetables were at their crispest, most melting
perfection, and the cherries from Anjou were like miniature apples of
Hesperus. Up and down the smaller streets went white-capped little old
women, with baskets on their arms, covered with snowy linen, and they
chanted musically on the first three notes of the scale, so that the
sunny vault above them resounded to the cry, "De la creme, fromage a
la creme!" The three Americans had enchanted expeditions to Chantilly,
to Versailles again, called back from the past and the dead by the
miracle of spring; to more distant formidable Coucy, grimly looking
out over the smiling country at its foot, to Fontainebleau, even a two
days' dash into Touraine, to Blois, Amboise, Loches, jewels set in the
green enamels of May ... and all the time Sylvia's attempt to take
the present and to let the future bring what it would, was pitched
perforce in a higher and higher key,--took a more violent effort to
achieve.

She fell deeper than ever under Morrison's spell, and yet the lack of
Austin was like an ache to her. She had said to herself, "I will not
let myself think of him until his letter comes," and she woke up in
the night su