The next day happened to be Sunday, and Philip came as usual to take Sylvia out. He had sent her the evening before an overcoat trimmed with gray squirrel, which, if it had not arrived after Miss Lee’s departure, would have been so much more joyfully welcomed. Philip asked her why she was so sad and if the coat did not please her. She told him about its coming after Miss Lee had gone, and, as usual, he had a lot to say:
“You strange child, how quickly you have adopted the outlook and manners of the English school-girl. One would say that you had never been anything else. How absurd I was to be afraid that you were a wild bird whom I had caught too late. I’m quite positive now that you’ll be happy with me down in Hampshire. I’m sorry you’ve lost Miss Lee. A charming woman, I thought, and very cultivated. Miss Ashley will miss her greatly, but she herself will be glad to get away from music-teaching. It must be an atrocious existence.”
Here was a new point of view altogether. Could it really be possible that those delicious hours with Miss Lee were a penance to the mistress? Sylvia looked at Philip angrily, for she found it unforgivable in him to destroy her illusions like this. He did not observe her expression and continued his monologue:
“Really atrocious. Exercises! Scales! Other people’s chilblains! A creaking piano-stool! What a purgatory! And all to teach a number of young women to inflict an objectionable noise upon their friends and relations.”
“Thanks,” Sylvia broke in. “You won’t catch me playing again.”
“I’m not talking about you,” Philip said. “You have temperament. You’re different from the ordinary school-girl.” He took her arm affectionately. “You’re you, dear Sylvia.”
“And yours,” she added, sullenly. “I thought you said just now that I was just like any other English school-girl and that you were so happy about it.”
“I said you’d wonderfully adopted the outlook,” Philip corrected. “Not quite the same thing.”
“Oh, well, take your horrible coat, because I don’t want it,” Sylvia exclaimed, and, rapidly unbuttoning her new overcoat, she flung it on the pavement at his feet.
Nobody was in sight at the moment, so Philip did not get angry.