as morning. How can
poor Father crave those 'messages' from her! Everything is a message
from her. We've lived with her. We have her in our hearts. It's all
brightness when I think of her. And I see by that brightness what's in
my heart, and that's Austin ... Austin!" On the name, her voice rose,
expanded, soared, wonderfully rang in the ensuing silence....

Arnold said slowly, without opening his eyes: "Yes, yes, I see. I see
how it is all right with you and Austin. He's big enough for you, all
of you. And Felix--he's not so bad either--but he has, after all, a
yellow streak. Poor Felix!"

This brought up to Sylvia the recollection of the day, so short a time
ago when she had sat on the ground thus, much as she now sat next to
Arnold, and had felt Judith's body rigid and tense. There was nothing
rigid about Arnold. He was relaxed in an exhausted passivity, a beaten
man. Let what would, befall. He seemed beyond feeling. She knew that
probably never again, so life goes, could they speak together thus,
like disembodied spirits, freed for once from the blinding, entangling
tragic web of self-consciousness. She wondered again if he would find
it in his heart to speak to her of Judith. She remembered something
else she had meant to ask him, if she could ever find words for her
question; and she found that, in that hour of high seriousness,
they came quite without effort. "Arnold, when I was in Paris, I met
Professor Saunders. I ran across him by accident. He told me
some dreadful things. I thought they couldn't all be true. But I
wondered--"

Arnold opened his eyes and turned them on her. She saw again, as she
had so many times, the honesty of them. They were bloodshot, yellowed,
set deep in dark hollows; but it was a good gaze they gave. "Oh, don't
take poor old Saunders too seriously. He went all to pieces in the
end. He had a lot to say about Madrina, I suppose. I shouldn't pay
much attention to it. Madrina's not such a bad lot as he makes her
out. Madrina's all right if you don't want anything out of her. She's
the way she is, that's all. It's not fair to blame her. We're all like
that," he ended with a pregnant, explanatory phrase which fell with an
immense significance on Sylvia's ear. "Madrina's all right when she's
got what she wants."

The girl pondered in silence on this characterization. After a time
Arnold roused himself to say again: "I mean she wouldn't go out of
her way to hurt anybody, for anything. She