Sylvia stopped for an instant to take in the marvel of this pageant, enacted every day of every season against that magnificent background. She made a gesture to call her companions' attention to it—"Isn't it in the key of Rubens—bloom, radiance, life expansive!"
"And Chabrier should set it to music," said Morrison.
"What does it make you think of?" she asked. "It makes me think of a beautiful young Greek, in a purple chiton, with a wreath of roses in his hair."
"It makes me think of a beautiful young woman, all fire and spirit, and fineness, who drinks life like a perfumed wine," said Morrison, his eyes on hers. She felt a little shiver of frightened pleasure, and turned to Page to carry it off, "What does it make you think of?" she asked.
"It makes me think," he answered her at once, his eyes on the haze caught like a dream in the tender green of the budding trees,—"it makes me think of a half-naked, sweating man, far underground in black night, striking at a rock with a pick."
If he had burst into loud profanity, the effect could not have been more shocking. "Oh!" said Sylvia, vexed and put out. She began to walk forward. Morrison in his turn gave an exclamation which seemed the vent of long-stored exasperation, and said with heat: "Look here, Page, you're getting to be a perfect monomaniac on the subject! What earthly good does it do your man with a pick to ruin a fine moment by lugging him in!"
They were all advancing up the avenue now, Sylvia between the two men. They talked at each other across her. She listened intently, with the feeling that Morrison was voicing for her the question she had been all her life wishing once for all to let fly at her parents' standards: "What good did it do anybody to go without things you might have? Conditions were too vast for one person to influence."
"No earthly good," said Page peaceably; "I didn't say it did him any good. Miss Marshall asked me what all this made me think of, and I told her."
"It is simply becoming an obsession with you!" urged Morrison. Sylvia remembered what Page had said about his irritation years ago when Austin had withdrawn from the collector's field.
"Yes, it's becoming an obsession with me," agreed Page thoughtfully. He spoke as he always did, with the simplest manner of direct sincerity.