"I didn't understand before," said Sylvia; and she was speaking the truth.
"And you'll let him alone? You won't talk to him—play his accompaniments—oh, those long talks of yours!"
"We've been talking, you silly dear, of the Renaissance compared to the Twentieth Century, and of the passing of the leisure class, and all the beauty they always create," said Sylvia. Again she spoke the literal truth. But the true truth, burning on Molly's tongue, shriveled this to ashes. "You've been making him admire you, be interested in you, see how little I amount to!" she cried. "But if you don't care about him yourself—if you'll—two weeks, Sylvia—just keep out for two weeks…." As if it were part of the leaping forward of her imagination, she suddenly started the car again, and with a whirling, reckless wrench at the steering-wheel she had turned the car about and was racing back over the road they had come.
"Where are you going?" cried Sylvia to her, above the noise of their progress.
"Back!" she answered, laughing out. "What's the use of going on now?" She opened the throttle to its widest and pressing her lips together tightly, gave herself up to the intoxication of speed.
Once she said earnestly: "You're fine, Sylvia! I never knew a girl could be like you!" And once more she threw out casually: "Do you know what I was going to do if I found out you and Felix—if you hadn't…? I was going to jump the car over the turn there on Prospect Hill."
Remembering the terrible young face of pain and wrath which she had watched on the way out, Sylvia believed her; or at least believed that she believed her. In reality, her immortal youth was incapable of believing in the fact of death in any form. But the words put a stamp of tragic sincerity on their wild expedition, and on her companion's suffering. She thought of the two weeks which lay before Molly, and turned away her eyes in sympathy….
* * * * *
Ten days after this, an announcement was made of the engagement of Mary Montgomery Sommerville, sole heiress of the great Montgomery fortune, to Felix Morrison, the well-known critic of aesthetics.