“What is it?” Sylvia questioned, kindly. “Wastewater too lonely?”
Gabrielle did not answer immediately, except by a quick shake of her head. Presently she said, a little thickly:
“No, I love Wastewater more than any other place in the world.”
“Well,” said Sylvia, musing, “if you must try your wings, by all means try them! Be sure we’ll all be interested in making it a success, Gay. Mamma and I may go abroad in the fall—it isn’t definite, of course, but I think she would like it, if all my various anchors here can be managed without me.”
Gabrielle had been burning, fearing, hating to ask it; she found herself saying now, with a little unconquerable incoherence:
“Then you and David——?”
“David and I,” answered Sylvia, with a quick, mysterious smile, “are quite the best friends in the world!”
Did she know? David, in asking her to free him, had told her how much? Gay looked at her cousin through the mirror, and her face blazed. But Sylvia, curling the end of her long braid thoughtfully about her finger, was unsuspicious. Gay wondered if she could be acting.
“I don’t mind telling you, dear,” said Sylvia, presently, “that I wrote David in the spring, feeling that our understanding was an injustice to us both, and asked him to be just my good friend—my best friend,” Sylvia interrupted herself to say, with a little emotion, “for to me he is the finest man in the world!—for a little while longer. And as he has been my obedient knight ever since I was a little curly-headed despot in short frocks, of course he obeyed me,” she ended, with a little whimsical glance and smile. And now, having gotten to her feet, and come over to the mirror, she laid one arm affectionately about Gabrielle’s shoulder. “I love that bright thick hair of yours,” Sylvia said.
Suddenly Gabrielle felt young, crude, hateful because she did not adore Sylvia, contemptible because she suffered in seeing that this other girl’s position and happy destiny it was to be always admired, always superb. Why couldn’t she—why couldn’t she school herself to think of Sylvia as rich and beautiful and adored, and married to David, and mistress of Wastewater? Weren’t there other men, other fortunes, other friends to be won? Gay laid Sylvia’s smooth hand against her cheek, and said like a penitent child: