She said cheerfully, in a tone which seemed to minimize the whole affair into the smallest of passing incidents:  “Now, you queer darling, don’t stand so in your own light!  A word would bring Jerry back to you now—­but I won’t say it will always.  I don’t suppose you’ve ever considered, in your young selfishness, how cruelly you have hurt his feelings!  He was awfully sore when I saw him.  And Eleanor Hubert is right on the spot with Mamma Hubert in the background to push.”

Sylvia broke her silence to say in a low tone, blushing scarlet, “He was—­horrid!”

Mrs. Draper dropped her light tone and said earnestly:  “Dear little ignorant Sylvia—­you don’t recognize life when you see it.  That’s the way men are—­all men—­and there’s no use thinking it horrid unless you’re going into a convent.  It’s not so bad either,—­once you get the hang of managing it—­it’s a hold on them.  It’s a force, like any other force of nature that you can either rebel against, or turn to your account and make serviceable, if you’ll only accept it and not try to quarrel with water for running downhill.  As long as she herself isn’t carried away by it, it’s a weapon in the hand of a clever woman.  Only the stupid women get hurt by it—­the silly ones who can’t keep their heads.  And after all, my dear, it is a force of nature—­and you’re too intelligent not to know that there’s no use fighting against that.  It’s just idiotic and puritanic to revolt from it—­and doesn’t do any good besides!” She looked keenly into Sylvia’s downcast, troubled face, and judged it a propitious moment for leaving her. “Good-bye, darling,” she said, with a final pat on the shoulder.

Sylvia walked slowly into the house, her heart like lead.  Her food had no savor to her.  She did not know what she was eating, nor what her mother, the only one at home for lunch, was saying to her.  As a matter of fact Mrs. Marshall said very little, even less than was her custom.  Her face had the look of terrible, patient endurance it had worn during the time when Lawrence had had pneumonia, and his life had hung in the balance for two days; but she went quietly about her usual household tasks.

After the meal was over, Sylvia continued to sit alone at the table, staring palely down at the tablecloth, her mind full of Mrs. Draper’s illuminating comments on life, which had gone through her entire system like a dexterously administered drug.  And yet that ingenious lady would have been surprised to know how entirely her attack had failed in the one point which seemed to her important, the possibility of a reconciliation between Sylvia and Jermain.  The girl was deeply under the impression made by the philosophy of the older woman; she did not for the moment dream of denying its truth; but she stood granite in a perfectly illogical denial of its implications in her own case.  She did not consciously revolt against the suggestion that she renew her relations