ement! Sylvia came around to
another phase of her new idea, there would be something worth doing,
to show that one could be as fine and true in a palace as in a
hut,--even as in a Vermont farmhouse! At this, suddenly all thought
left her. Austin Page stood before her, fixing on her his clear and
passionate and tender eyes. At that dear and well-remembered gaze, her
lip began to quiver like a child's, and her eyes filled.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith stirred herself with the effect of a splendid ship
going into action with all flags flying. "Sylvia dear," she said,
"this rain tonight makes me think of a new plan. It will very likely
rain for a week or more now. Paris is abominable in the rain. What do
you say to a change? Madeleine Perth was telling me this afternoon
that the White Star people are running a few ships from Portsmouth by
way of Cherbourg around by Gibraltar, through the Mediterranean to
Naples. That's one trip your rolling-stone of an aunt has never taken,
and I'd rather like to add it to my collection. We could be in Naples
in four days from Cherbourg and spend a month in Italy, going north as
the heat arrived. Felix--why don't you come along? You've been wanting
to see the new low reliefs in the Terme, in Rome?"

Sylvia's heart, like all young hearts, was dazzled almost to blinking
by the radiance shed from the magic word Italy. She turned, looking
very much taken aback and bewildered, but with light in her eyes,
color in her face.

Morrison burst out: "Oh, a dream realized! Something to live on all
one's days, the pines of the Borghese--the cypresses of the Villa
Medici--roses cascading over the walls in Rome, the view across the
Campagna from the terraces at Rocca di Papa--"

Sylvia thought rapidly to herself: "Austin _said_ he did not want me
to answer at once. He _said_ he wanted me to take time--to take time!
I can decide better, make more sense out of everything, if I--after I
have thought more, have taken more time. No, I am not turning my back
on him. Only I must have more time to think--"

Aloud she said, after a moment's silence, "Oh, nothing could be
lovelier!"

She lay in her warm, clean white bed that night, sleeping the sound
sleep of the healthy young animal which has been wet and cold and
hungry, and is now dry and warmed and fed.

Outside, across the city, on his bronze pedestal, the tortured
Thinker, loyal to his destiny, still strove terribly against the
limitations of his ape-like fo