Breaking in upon this speech, there came the quick, smooth purr of an automobile with all its parts functioning perfectly, a streak of dark gray past the shutters, the sigh of an engine stopped suddenly—­Molly Sommerville sprang from behind the steering wheel and ran into the house.  She was exquisitely flushed and eager when she came in, but when she saw the two alone in the great, cool, dusky room, filled to its remotest corners with the ineffable aroma of long, intimate, and interrupted talk, she was brought up short.  She faltered for an instant and then continued to advance, her eyes on Sylvia.  “It’s so hot,” she said, at random, “and I thought I’d run over for tea—­”

“Oh, of course,” said Sylvia, jumping up in haste, “it’s late!  I’d forgotten it was time for tea!  Blame me! Since I’ve been here, Aunt Victoria has left it to me—­where shall I say to have it set?”

“The pergola’s lovely,” suggested Molly.  She took her close motor-hat from the pure gold of her hair with a rather listless air.

“All right—­the pergola!” agreed Sylvia, perhaps a little too anxiously.  In spite of herself, she gave, and she knew she was giving, the effect of needing somehow to make something up to Molly....

CHAPTER XXV

NOTHING IN THE LEAST MODERN

Sylvia was sitting in the garden, an unread book on her knees, dreaming among red and yellow and orange gladioli.  She looked with a fixed, bright, beatific stare at the flame-colored flowers and did not see them.  She saw only Felix Morrison, she heard only his voice, she was brimming with the sense of him.  In a few moments she would go into the house and find him in the darkened living-room, as he had been every afternoon for the last fortnight, ostensibly come in to lounge away the afternoon over a book, really waiting for her to join him.  And when she came in, he would look up at her, that wonderful penetrating deep look of his ... and she would welcome him with her eyes.

And then they would talk!  Judith and Arnold would be playing tennis, oblivious of the heat, and Aunt Victoria would be annihilating the tedious center of the day by sleep.  Nobody would interrupt them for hours.  How they would talk!  How they had talked!  As she thought of it the golden fortnight hummed and sang about Sylvia’s ears like a Liszt Liebes-Traum.

They had talked of everything in the world, and it all meant but one thing, that they had discovered each other, a discovery visibly as wonderful for Morrison as for the girl.  They had discovered each other, and they had been intelligent enough to know at once what it meant.  They knew!  And in a moment she would go into the house to him.  She half closed her eyes as before a too-great brilliance....

Arnold appeared at the other end of the long row of gladioli.  He was obviously looking for some one.  Sylvia called to him, with the friendly tone she always had for him:  “Here I am!  I don’t know where Judith is.  Will I do?”