“I mean just what I say. He doesn’t love me—not as Frank loves me. He isn’t capable of it.”
“But then—why—for what other reason should he be marrying you?”
“I’m beautiful, and he wants me. But it’s mainly because I offended his vanity—yes, just that! I turned him down, I ridiculed him and insulted him. I was something he couldn’t get; and the more he couldn’t get me, the more the thought of me rankled in his mind.”
“Sylvia! How can you be so cynical!”
“I’m not cynical at all. I just won’t gild things over, as other women do. I won’t make pretences, I won’t cover myself and my whole life with a cloak of shams. I know right now that I’m being sold, just as much as if I were led out to an auction-block with chains about my ankles! I’m being sold to a man—and I was meant to be sold to a man from the very beginning of my life!”
There was a silence; for Aunt Varina was paralyzed by these amazing words. She had never heard such an utterance in her life before. “Sylvia!” she cried. “What do you mean? Who is driving you?”
“I don’t know! But something is!”
“How can you say it? Can you imagine that your good, kind parents—”
“Oh, no!” interrupted Sylvia, passionately. “At least—they don’t know it!”
Mrs. Tuis sat dumfounded. “Sylvia,” she quavered, at last, “let me implore you to get yourself together before your father arrives in New York. If he should hear what you have said to me to-night, he would never get over it—truly, it would kill him!”