“No, no! I can get about the room very well.”
“You couldn't go down-stairs—for an hour's drive, could you?”
“Can't manage that for awhile,” he said hastily.
“Oh, the vanity of you, Stephen Siward! the vanity! Ashamed to let me see you when you are not your complete and magnificently attractive self! Silly, I shall see you! I shall drive down on the first sunny morning and sit outside in my victoria until you can't stand the temptation another instant. I'm going to do it. You cannot stop me; nobody can stop me. I desire to do it, and that is sufficient, I think, for everybody concerned. If the sun is out to-morrow, I shall be out too!... I am so tired of not seeing you! Let central listen! I don't care. I don't care what I am saying. I've endured it so long—I—There's no use! I am too tired of it, and I want to see you.... Can't we see each other without—without—thinking about things that are settled once and for all?”
“I can't,” he said.
“Then you'd better learn to! Because, if you think I'm going through life without seeing you frequently you are simple! I've stood it too long at a time. I won't go through this sort of thing again! You'd better be amiable; you'd better be civil to me, or—or—nobody on earth can tell what will happen! The idea of you telling me you had lost your nerve! You've got to get it back—and help me find mine! Yes, it's gone, gone, gone! I lost it in the rain, somewhere, to-day.... Does the scent of the rain come in at your window?... Do you remember—There! I can't say it.... Good-bye. Good-bye. You must get well and I must, too. Good-bye.”
The fruit of her imprudence was happiness—an excited happiness, which lasted for a day. The rain lasted, too, for another day, then turned to snow, choking the city with such a fall as had not been seen since the great blizzard—blocking avenues, barricading cross-streets, burying squares and circles and parks, and still falling, drifting, whirling like wind-whipped smoke from cornice and roof-top. The electric cars halted; even the great snow-ploughs roared impotent amid the snowy wastes; waggons floundered into cross-streets and stuck until dug out; and everywhere, in the thickening obscurity, battalions of emergency men with pick and shovel struggled with the drifts in Fifth Avenue and Broadway. Then the storm ended at daybreak.
All day long squadrons of white gulls wheeled and sailed in the sky above the snowy expanse of park where the great, rectangular sheets of water glimmered black in their white setting. As she sat at her desk she could see them drifting into and out of the gray squares of sky framed by her window-panes. Two days ago she had seen them stemming the sky blasts, heralding the coming of unfelt tempests, flapping steadily through the fragrant rain. Now, the false phantom which had mimicked spring turned on the world the glassy glare of winter, stupefying hope, stunning desire, clogging the life essence in all young, living things. The first vague summons, the restlessness of awakening aspiration, the first delicate, indrawn breath, were stilled to deathly immobility.
Sylvia, at her escritoire, chin cradled in her hollowed hand, sat listlessly inspecting her mail—the usual pile of bills and advertisements, social demands and interested appeals, with here and there a frivolous note from some intimate to punctuate the endless importunities.
Her housekeeper had come and gone; the Belwether establishment could jog through another day. Various specialists, who cared for the health and beauty of her body, had entered and made their unctuous exits. The major had gone to Tuxedo for the week's end; her maid had bronchitis; two horses required the veterinary, and the kitchen range a new water-back.