Ahead of her to the right, the Rue St. Jacques climbed the hill to the Pantheon. She took it because it was broad and clean and differed from the musty darkness from which she had come out; she fled up the steep grade with a swift, light step as though she were on a country walk. She might indeed have been upon some flat road near La Chance for all she saw of the buildings, the people around her.
How like Austin's fine courage that was, his saying that he did not want her to decide in haste, but to take time to know what she was doing! What other man would not have stayed to urge her, to hurry her, to impose his will on hers, masterfully to use his personality to confuse her, to carry her off? For an instant, through all her wretched bewilderment, she thrilled to a high, impersonal appreciation of his saying: "If I had stayed with you, I should have tried to take you by force—but you are too fine for that, Sylvia! What you could be to the man you loved if you went to him freely—that is too splendid to risk losing. I want all of you—heart, soul, mind—or nothing!" Sylvia looked up through this clear white light to Austin's yearning eyes, and back through the ages with a wondering pity at the dark figure of Jerry Fiske, emerging from his cave. She had come a long way since then.
And then all this, everything fine, everything generous, ebbed away from her with deadly swiftness, and in a cold disgust with herself she knew that she had been repeating over and over Morrison's "Austin will not have a cent left … nothing but those Vermont scrub forests." So that was the kind of a woman she was. Well, if that was the kind of woman she was, let her live her life accordingly. She was sick with indecision as she fled onward through the rain.
Few pedestrians were abroad in the rain, and those who were, sheltered themselves slant-wise with their umbrellas against the wind, and scudded with the storm. Sylvia had an umbrella, but she did not open it. She held her face up once, to feel the rain fall on it, and this reminded her of home, and long rainy walks with her father. She winced at this, and put him hastily out of her mind. And she had been unconsciously wishing to see her mother! At the very recollection of her mother she lengthened her stride. There was another thought to run away from!
She swung around the corner near the Pantheon and rapidly approached the door of the great Library of Ste. Geneviève. A thin, draggled, middle-aged woman-student, entering hastily, slipped on the wet stones and knocked from under his arm the leather portfolio of a thin, draggled, middle-aged man who was just coming out. The woman did not stop to help repair the damage she had done, but hastened desperately on into the shelter of the building. Sylvia's eyes, absent as they were, were caught and held by the strange, blank look of the man, who stood motionless, his shabby hat knocked to one side of his thin, gray hair, his curiously filmed eyes fixed stupidly on the litter of papers scattered at his feet. The rain was beginning to convert them into sodden pulp, but he did not stir. The idea occurred to Sylvia that he might be ill, and she advanced to help him. As he saw her stoop to pick them up, he said in French, in a toneless voice, very indifferently: "Don't give yourself the trouble. They are of no value. I carry them only to make the Library attendants think I am a bona-fide reader. I go there to sleep because I have no other roof."
His French was entirely fluent, but the accent was American. Sylvia looked up at him surprised. He returned her gaze dully, and without another look at the papers, scuffled off through the rain, across the street towards the Pantheon. His boots were lamentable.
Sylvia had an instantly vanishing memory of a pool of quiet sunshine, of a ripely beautiful woman and a radiant young man. Before she knew she was speaking, an impulsive cry had burst from her: "Why, Professor Saunders! Professor Saunders! Don't you know me? I am Sylvia Marshall!"
CHAPTER XXXIX
SYLVIA DRIFTS WITH THE MAJORITY
"No, they don't let you sit down in here if you're as shabby as I am," said the man, continuing his slow, feeble, shuffling progress. "They know you're only a vagrant, here to get out of the rain. They won't even let you stand still long."