The day after the University opened for the winter term the Huberts announced the engagement of their daughter Eleanor to Jermain Fiske, Jr., the brilliant son of that distinguished warrior and statesman, Colonel Jermain Fiske.  Sylvia read this announcement in the Society Column of the La Chance Morning Herald, with an enigmatic expression on her face, and betaking herself to the skating-pond, cut grapevines with greater assiduity than ever, and with a degree of taciturnity surprising in a person usually so talkative.  That she had taken the first step away from the devouring egotism of childhood was proved by the fact that at least part of the time, this vigorous young creature, swooping about the icy pond like a swallow, was thinking pityingly of Eleanor Hubert’s sweet face.

CHAPTER XXI

SOME YEARS DURING WHICH NOTHING HAPPENS

Judith had said to the family, taking no especial pains that her sister should not hear her, “Well, folks, now that Sylvia’s got through with that horrid Fiske fellow, I do hope we’ll all have some peace!” a remark which proved to be a prophecy.  They all, including Sylvia herself, knew the tranquillity of an extended period of peace.

It began abruptly, like opening a door into a new room.  Sylvia had dreaded the beginning of the winter term and the inevitable sight of Jerry, the enforced crossings of their paths.  But Jerry never returned to his classes at all.  The common talk was to the effect that the Colonel had “worked his pull” to have Jerry admitted to the bar without further preliminaries.  After some weeks of relief, it occurred to Sylvia that perhaps Jerry had dreaded meeting her as much as she had seeing him.  For whatever reason, the campus saw young Fiske no more, except on the day in May when he passed swiftly across it on his way to the Hubert house where Eleanor, very small and white-faced, waited for him under a crown of orange blossoms.

Sylvia did not go to the wedding, although an invitation had come, addressed economically and compendiously to “Professor and Mrs. Marshall and family.”  It was a glorious spring day and in her Greek history course they had just reached the battle of Salamis, at the magnificent recital of which Sylvia’s sympathetic imagination leaped up rejoicing, as all sympathetic imaginations have for all these many centuries.  She was thrilling to a remembered bit of “The Persians” as she passed by the Hubert house late that afternoon.  She was chanting to herself, “The right wing, well marshaled, led on foremost in good order, and we heard a mighty shout—­’Sons of the Greeks!  On!  Free your country!’” She did not notice that she trod swiftly across a trail of soiled rice in the Hubert driveway.