“I hope Miss Marshall will think that Paris will be big enough for all of us?” asked Austin Page, fixing his remarkably clear eyes on the girl.

She made a great effort for self-possession.  She turned her back on the receiving-line.  She held out her hand cordially.  “I hope Paris will be quite, quite small, so that we shall all see a great deal of each other,” she said warmly.

CHAPTER XXXIV

SYLVIA TELLS THE TRUTH

They left Mrs. Marshall-Smith with a book, seated on a little yellow-painted iron chair, the fifteen-centime kind, at the top of the great flight of steps leading down to the wide green expanse of the Tapis Vert.  She was alternately reading Huysmans’ highly imaginative ideas on Gothic cathedrals, and letting her eyes stray up and down the long facade of the great Louis.  Her powers of aesthetic assimilation seemed to be proof against this extraordinary mixture of impressions.  She had insisted that she would be entirely happy there in the sun, for an hour at least, especially if she were left in solitude with her book.  On which intimation Sylvia and Page had strolled off to do some exploring.  It was a situation which a month of similar arrangements had made very familiar to them.

“No, I don’t know Versailles very well,” he said in answer to her question, “but I believe the gardens back of the Grand and Petit Trianon are more interesting than these near the Chateau itself.  The conscientiousness with which they’re kept up is not quite so formidable.”

So they walked down the side of the Grand Canal, admiring the rather pensive beauty of the late November woods, and talking, as was the proper thing, about the great Louis and his court, and how they both detested his style of gilded, carved wall ornamentation, although his chairs weren’t as bad as some others.  They turned off at the cross-arm of the Canal towards the Great Trianon; they talked, again dutifully in the spirit of the place, about Madame de Maintenon.  They differed on this subject just enough to enjoy discussing it.  Page averred that the whole affair had always passed his comprehension, “—­what that ease-loving, vain, indulgent, trivial-minded grandson of Henri Quatre could ever have seen for all those years in that stiff, prim, cold old school-ma’am—­”

But Sylvia shook her head.  “I know how he felt.  He had to have her, once he’d found her.  She was the only person in all his world he could depend on.”

“Why not depend on himself?” Page asked.

“Oh, he couldn’t!  He couldn’t!  She had character and he hadn’t.”

“What do you mean by character?” he challenged her.

“It’s what I haven’t!” she said.

He attempted a chivalrous exculpation.  “Oh, if you mean by character such hard, insensitive lack of imagination as Madame de Maintenon’s—­”

“No, not that,” said Sylvia. “You know what I mean by character as well as I.”