"What kind of questions?"
"Oh, all kinds!" Sylvia dropped down on the low window seat, like a bird suddenly alighting, and clasped her hands around her knees in reckless disregard of her billowing chiffons. "I'm a little afflicted with socialism and that is a sad disease for a person who has as much money as I have. But that isn't all. I am so at sea about so many things, and there are so many strings pulling in all directions. Suzanne thinks New York is the only place in the world to really live in and she wants me to come and live with her and study or do something. She doesn't think it matters much what, so long as I breathe New York, and Barb is nearly as bad. They are both full of up-to-date notions and they think I'm just going to slip behind if I stay here and maybe I shall. I can see pretty easily how I could. Everybody here expects me to do the regular coming out performance, teas and dinners and balls and the rest, with maybe a little discreet charity work thrown in, and possibly a paper on art or ethics for the literary club. You know what Greendale is. The Gordons want me to go to Japan with them and Hilda wants me to join her in Berlin, or did before the war. Goodness knows where she is now. I haven't heard since July. And--well, there are other things."
Felicia quite understood that Jack Amidon might possibly be another string pulling the girl. It was no secret from the Hill, and certainly not from the wise-eyed "Big Sister," that that devoted, persistent and "magerful" young man had every intention of storming Sylvia's hill top and carrying off its princess if such a feat were humanly possible.
"And you don't want to do any of these things?"
Sylvia smiled dubiously.
"Oh, yes, a little of me wants to do all those things. But the most of me wants to stay right here at Arden Hall and do nothing particular. I'd like a kind of year o' grace I think. I don't seem to have any especial ambitions nor desires except to learn to live as broad and deep and quick as I can." She shifted her position slightly and looked out into the night where her beloved rose garden lay in magical moonlight and shadow and a faint sigh escaped her, born of the very beauty, poignant almost as pain, so quick was her response to it. Suddenly she turned back and her eyes smiled at Felicia.
"Life's funny, isn't it?" she said, springing up. "Felicia, what ever in the world should I do without you?" She eyed a little sternly the bunch of violets Felicia was wearing, a fresh bunch which had arrived that day. "Felicia, Mr. Kinnard isn't--you aren't--?"
Felicia laughed.
"Your observations lack a certain finished coherence but I assure you I am not, nor is he--at least, not seriously."
"I'm so glad!" sighed Sylvia. "I know I'm a pig but I should simply hate Stephen Kinnard if I thought he were going to carry you off, and I should hate to hate him he is so exceedingly nice. I wish he could have stayed for the party to-night. Oh me! We ought to be downstairs this blessed minute. Am I all right, Felicia? You never did tell me." And Sylvia whirled around to the mirror for a last critical survey. Felicia, whose eyes also sought the reflected figure in the glass, thought she had never seen the girl lovelier than she was to-night in all her shimmering bravery of white and silver. But there was always something more than mere prettiness about Sylvia, something which seemed to shine from within out. She was so exquisitely alive like the fire in the heart of an opal or a jet of pure flame.