"George, if you wanted to grow hair on a bald man's head I'd say go to it."
"And there must be room for Dicky," George went on.
"We've played together too long to break apart now; but why talk about it? It depends on Sylvia."
That was entirely true. For the present there was nothing whatever to be done. Constantly George conquered the impulse to write to Sylvia, but she didn't write or give any sign, unless Lambert's frequent quotations from her letters could be accepted as thoughtful messages.
He visited the Baillys frequently now, for it was stimulating to talk with Squibs, and he liked to sit quietly with Mrs. Bailly. She had an unstudied habit, nevertheless, of turning his thoughts to his mother. Sylvia had seen her. She knew all about her. After all, his mother had given him the life with which he had accomplished something. He couldn't bear that their continued separation should prove him inconsistent; so early in the spring he went west.
His mother was more than ever ill at ease before his success; more than ever appreciative of the comforts he had given her; even more than at Oakmont appalled at the prospect of change. She wouldn't go east. She couldn't very well, she explained; and, looking at her tired figure in the great chair before the fire which she seldom left, he had an impulse to shower upon her extravagant and fantastic gifts, because before long it would be too late to give her anything at all. The picture made him realize how quickly the generations pass away, drifting one into the other with the rapidity of our brief and colourful seasons. He nodded, satisfied, reflecting that the cure for everything lies in the future, although one must seek it in the diseased present.
He left her, promising to come back, but he carried away a sensation that he had intruded on a secluded content that couldn't possibly survive the presence of the one who had created it.
Lambert had no news for him on his return. It was late spring, in fact, before he told George the family had come north, pausing at a number of resorts on the way up.
"When am I to see Sylvia, Lambert?"
"How should I know?"