ked up in her face as she passed and then after her with
calm, understanding eyes. Kneeling there, day after day, she had seen
many another young, troubled soul fleeing from its own thoughts.

Sylvia crossed the parvis of Notre Dame, glistening wet, and passed
over the gray Seine, slate under the gray mist of the rain. Under her
feet the impalpable dust of a city turned to gray slime which clung to
her shoes. She walked on through a narrow, mean street of mediaeval
aspect where rag-pickers, drearily oblivious of the rain, quarreled
weakly over their filthy piles of trash. She looked at them in
astonishment, in dismay, in horror. Since leaving La Chance, save for
that one glimpse over the edge back in the Vermont mountains, she had
been so consistently surrounded by the padded satin of possessions
that she had forgotten how actual poverty looked. In fact, she had
never had more than the briefest fleeting glances at it. This was
so extravagant, so extreme, that it seemed impossible to her. And
yet--and yet--She looked fleetingly into those pale, dingy, underfed,
repulsive faces and wondered if coal-miners' families looked like
that.

But she said aloud at once, almost as though she had crooked an arm to
shield herself: "But he _said_ he did not want me to answer at once!
He _said_ he wanted me to take time--to take time--to take time ..."
She hastened her steps to this refrain, until she was almost running;
and emerged upon the broad, well-kept expanse of the Boulevard St.
Germain with a long-drawn breath of relief.

Ahead of her to the right, the Rue St. Jacques climbed the hill to the
Pantheon. She took it because it was broad and clean and differed from
the musty darkness from which she had come out; she fled up the steep
grade with a swift, light step as though she were on a country walk.
She might indeed have been upon some flat road near La Chance for all
she saw of the buildings, the people around her.

How like Austin's fine courage that was, his saying that he did not
want her to decide in haste, but to take time to know what she was
doing! What other man would not have stayed to urge her, to hurry her,
to impose his will on hers, masterfully to use his personality to
confuse her, to carry her off? For an instant, through all her
wretched bewilderment, she thrilled to a high, impersonal appreciation
of his saying: "If I had stayed with you, I should have tried to take
you by force--but you are too fine for th