She thought suddenly of what Sabine had said of Thérèse a little while before. “I was wrong about coming back here. I’ll never marry her off in this part of the world.”
It was true somehow of Sybil. The girl, in some mysterious fashion, knew what it was she wanted; and this was not a life which was safe and assured, running smoothly in a rigid groove fixed by tradition and circumstance. It was not marriage with a man who was like all the other men in his world. It went deeper than all that. She wanted somehow to get far down beneath the surface of that life all about her, deep down where there was a savor to all she did. It was a hunger which Olivia understood well enough.
The girl approached her mother and, slipping her arm about her waist, stood there, looking for all the world like Olivia’s sister.
“Have you enjoyed it?” asked Olivia.
“Yes.... It’s been fun.”
Olivia smiled. “But not too much?”
“No, not too much.” Sybil laughed abruptly, as if some humorous memory had suddenly come to life.
“Thérèse ran away,” said her mother.
“I know ... she told me she was going to.”
“She didn’t like it.”