“How astonishingly well you play,” said Page, rousing himself from the dreamy silence of appreciation.

“I ought to,” she said with conscious bitterness.  “I earn my living by teaching music.”

She was aware from across the room of an electric message from Aunt Victoria protesting against her perversity; and she reflected with a morose amusement that however delicately phrased Aunt Victoria’s protests might be, its substance was the same as that of Helene, crying out on her for not adding the soupcon of rouge.  She took a sudden resolution.  Well, why not?  Everything conspired to push her in that direction.  The few factors which did not were mere imbecile idealism, or downright hypocrisy.  She drew a long breath.  She smiled at Page, a smile of reference to something in common between them.  “Shan’t I play you some Beethoven?” she asked, “something with a legato passage and great solemn chords, and a silver melody binding the whole together?”

“Oh yes, do!” he said softly.  And in a moment she was putting all of her intelligence, her training, and her capacity to charm into the tones of the E-flat Minuet.

CHAPTER XXIX

A HYPOTHETICAL LIVELIHOOD

The millionaire proprietor had asked them all over to the Austin Farm, and as they drew near the end of the very expensive and delicately served meal which Page had spoken of as a “picnic-lunch,” various plans for the disposition of the afternoon were suggested.  These suggestions were prefaced by the frank statement of the owner of the place that whatever else the others did, it was his own intention to take Miss Marshall through a part of his pine plantations and explain his recent forestry operations to her.  The assumption that Miss Marshall would of course be interested in his pine plantations and lumbering operations struck nobody but Miss Marshall as queer.  With the most hearty and simple unconsciousness, they unanimously felt that of course Miss Marshall would be interested in the pine plantations and the lumbering operations of any man who was worth nobody knew how many millions in coal, and who was so obviously interested in her.

Sylvia had been for some weeks observing the life about her with very much disillusioned eyes and she now labeled the feeling on the part of her friends with great accuracy, saying to herself cynically, “If it were prize guinea-pigs or collecting beer-steins, they would all be just as sure that I would jump up and say, ’Oh yes, do show me, Mr. Page!’” Following this moody reflection she immediately jumped up and said enthusiastically, “Oh yes, do show me, Mr. Page!” The brilliance in her eyes during these weeks came partly from a relieved sense of escape from a humiliating position, and partly from an amusement at the quality of human nature which was as dubiously enjoyable as the grim amusement of biting on a sore tooth.