So the two spent an unhappy summer. Sylvia let herself be taken about to parties, but she grew more weary every hour of the social game. “I’ve smiled until I’ve got the lockjaw,” she would say. She was losing weight and growing pale, in spite of the mountain air.
September came, and Harriet’s wedding was set for the next month, and likewise Frank’s return to Harvard. He came back from the West, and Sylvia wrote asking him to come and visit her for a week. But to her consternation there came in reply a polite refusal from Frank. There was so much that needed his attention on the plantation, and some studying that must be done if he was to make good. For three days Sylvia struggled with herself, the last stand of that barbarian pride of hers; then she gave way completely and sent him a telegram: “Please come at once.”
She would have recalled it an hour afterwards, but it was too late; and that evening she received an answer, to the effect that he would arrive in the morning. She spent a sleepless night imagining his coming, and a score of different ways in which she would meet him. She would throw herself at his feet and beg him not to torture her; she would array herself in her newest gown and fascinate him in the good old way; she would climb once more upon the pinnacle of her pride and compel him to humble himself before her.
In the morning she drove to meet him, together with a cousin who had come on the same train. She never stood a worse social ordeal than that drive and the luncheon with the family. But at last they were alone together, and sat gazing at each other with eyes full of bewilderment and pain.
“Sylvia,” said Frank, finally, “you do not look happy.”
“Why should I be happy?” she asked.
There was a pause. “Listen,” he said. “Can we not deal honestly with each other—openly and sincerely, for once. Surely that is the best way, Sylvia—no matter how much it hurts.”
“I am ready to do it,” she replied.
“You don’t have to spare my feelings,” he went on. “I know all you have to contend with, and I sha’n’t blame you. The one thing I can’t bear is to be played with, to be lured by false hopes, to drag on and on, tormented by uncertainty.”
She was gazing at him, bewildered. “Why do you say all that, Frank?” she cried.