at, Sylvia! What you could be
to the man you loved if you went to him freely--that is too splendid
to risk losing. I want all of you--heart, soul, mind--or nothing!"
Sylvia looked up through this clear white light to Austin's yearning
eyes, and back through the ages with a wondering pity at the dark
figure of Jerry Fiske, emerging from his cave. She had come a long way
since then.

And then all this, everything fine, everything generous, ebbed away
from her with deadly swiftness, and in a cold disgust with herself she
knew that she had been repeating over and over Morrison's "Austin will
not have a cent left ... nothing but those Vermont scrub forests." So
that was the kind of a woman she was. Well, if that was the kind of
woman she was, let her live her life accordingly. She was sick with
indecision as she fled onward through the rain.

Few pedestrians were abroad in the rain, and those who were, sheltered
themselves slant-wise with their umbrellas against the wind, and
scudded with the storm. Sylvia had an umbrella, but she did not open
it. She held her face up once, to feel the rain fall on it, and this
reminded her of home, and long rainy walks with her father. She
winced at this, and put him hastily out of her mind. And she had been
unconsciously wishing to see her mother! At the very recollection of
her mother she lengthened her stride. There was another thought to run
away from!

She swung around the corner near the Pantheon and rapidly approached
the door of the great Library of Ste. Genevieve. A thin, draggled,
middle-aged woman-student, entering hastily, slipped on the wet stones
and knocked from under his arm the leather portfolio of a thin,
draggled, middle-aged man who was just coming out. The woman did not
stop to help repair the damage she had done, but hastened desperately
on into the shelter of the building. Sylvia's eyes, absent as they
were, were caught and held by the strange, blank look of the man, who
stood motionless, his shabby hat knocked to one side of his thin, gray
hair, his curiously filmed eyes fixed stupidly on the litter of papers
scattered at his feet. The rain was beginning to convert them into
sodden pulp, but he did not stir. The idea occurred to Sylvia that he
might be ill, and she advanced to help him. As he saw her stoop
to pick them up, he said in French, in a toneless voice, very
indifferently: "Don't give yourself the trouble. They are of no
value. I carry them only to make