"Oh, impractical! impractical! Wholly a back-eddy in the forward-moving current. You can't go back of a world-wide movement. Things are too complicated now for everybody to do his share of anything. It's as reasonable, as to suggest that everybody do his share of watchmaking, or fancy juggling. Every man to his trade! And if the man who makes watches, or cleans sewers, or even mines coal—your especial sore spot—does his work well, and is suited to it in temperament, who knows that he does not find it a satisfaction as complete as mine in telling a bit of genuine Palissy ware from an imitation. You, for instance, you'd make a pretty coal-miner, wouldn't you? You're about as suited to it as Miss Marshall here for being a college settlement worker!"
Sylvia broke out into an exclamation of wonder. "Oh, how you do put your finger on the spot! If you knew how I've struggled to justify myself for not going into 'social work' of some kind! Every girl nowadays who doesn't marry at twenty, is slated for 'social betterment' whether she has the least capacity for it or not. Public opinion pushes us into it as mediaeval girls were shoved into convents, because it doesn't know what else to do with us. It's all right for Judith,—it's fine for her. She's made for it. I envy her. I always have. But me—I never could bear the idea of interfering in people's lives to tell them what to do about their children and their husbands just because they were poor. It always seemed to me it was bad enough to be poor without having other people with a little more money messing around in your life. I'm different from that kind of people. If I'm sincere I can't pretend I'm not different. And I'm not a bit sure I know what's any better for them to do than what they're doing!" She had spoken impetuously, hotly, addressing not the men beside her but a specter of her past life.
"How true that is—how unerring the instinct which feels it!" said
Morrison appreciatively.
Page looked at Sylvia quickly, his clear eyes very tender. "Yes, yes; it's her very own life that Sylvia needs to live," he said in unexpected concurrence of opinion. Sylvia felt that the honors of the discussion so far were certainly with Felix. And Austin seemed oddly little concerned by this. He made no further effort to retrieve his cause, but fell into a silence which seemed rather preoccupied than defeated.
They were close to the Arc de Triomphe now. A brilliant sunset was firing a salvo of scarlet and gold behind it, and they stood for a moment to admire. "Oh, Paris! Paris!" murmured Morrison. "Paris in April! There's only one thing better, and that we have before us—Paris in May!"
They turned in past the loge of the concierge, and mounted in the languidly moving elevator to the appartement. Felix went at once to the piano and began playing something Sylvia did not recognize, something brilliantly colored, vivid, resonant, sonorous, perhaps Chabrier, she thought, remembering his remark on the avenue. Without taking off her hat she stepped to her favorite post of observation, the balcony, and sat down in the twilight with a sigh of exquisitely complete satisfaction, facing the sunset, the great arch lifting his huge, harmonious bulk up out of the dim, encircling trees, the resplendent long stretch of the lighted boulevard. The music seemed to rise up from the scene like its natural aroma.
Austin Page came out after her and leaned silently on the railing, looking over the city. Morrison finished the Chabrier and began on something else before the two on the balcony spoke. Sylvia was asking no questions of fate or the future, accepting the present with wilful blindness to its impermanence.
Austin said: "I have been trying to say good-bye all afternoon. I am going back to America tomorrow."
Sylvia was so startled and shocked that she could not believe her ears. Her heart beat hard. To an incoherent, stammered inquiry of hers, he answered, "It's my Colorado property—always that. It spoils everything. I must go back, and make a decision that's needed there. I've been trying to tell you. But I can't. Every time I have tried, I have not dared. If I told you, and you should beckon me back, I should not be strong enough to go on. I could not leave you, Sylvia, if you lifted your hand. And that would be the end of the best of us both." He had turned and faced her, his hands back of him, gripping the railing. The deep vibrations of his voice transported her to that never-forgotten moment at Versailles. He went on: "When it is—when the decision is made, I'll write you. I'll write you, and then—I shall wait to hear your answer!" From inside the room Felix poured a dashing spray of diamond-like trills upon them.
She murmured something, she did not know what; her breathing oppressed by her emotion. "Won't you—shan't we see you—here—?" She put her hand to her side, feeling an almost intolerable pain.