“That’s a safe guess!” said Sylvia ironically, “since there never have been any crucial moments in a life so uninterestingly eventless as mine.  I wonder what I would do,” she mused.  “My own conviction is that—­suppose I’d lived in the days of the Reformation—­in the days of Christ—­in the early Abolition days—­” She had an instant certainty:  “Oh, I have been entirely on the side of whatever was smooth, and elegant, and had amenity—­I’d have hated the righteous side!”

Page did not look very deeply moved by this revelation of depravity.  Indeed, he smiled rather amusedly at her, and changed the subject.  “You said a moment ago that I couldn’t understand, because I’d always had money.  Isn’t it a bit paradoxical to say that the people who haven’t a thing are the only ones who know anything about it?”

“But you couldn’t realize what losing the money meant to us.  You can’t know what the absence of money can do to a life.”

“I can know,” said Page, “what the presence of it cannot do for a life.”  His accent implied rather sadly that the omissions were considerable.

“Oh, of course, of course,” Sylvia agreed.  “There’s any amount it can’t do.  After you have it, you must get the other things too.”

He brought his eyes down to her from a roving quest among the tops of the trees.  “It seems to me you want a great deal,” he said quizzically.

“Yes, I do,” she admitted.  “But I don’t see that you have any call to object to my wanting it.  You don’t have to wish for everything at once.  You have it already.”

He received this into one of his thoughtful silences, but presently it brought him to a standstill.  They were within sight of the Grand Canal again, looking down from the terrace of the Trianon.  He leaned against the marble balustrade and thrust his hands deep into his pockets.  His clear eyes were clouded.  He looked profoundly grave.  “I am thirty-two years old,” he said, “and never for a moment of that time have I made any sense out of my position in life.  If you call that ’having everything’—­”

It occurred to Sylvia fleetingly that she had never made any sense out of her position in life either, and had been obliged to do a great many disagreeable things into the bargain, but she kept this thought to herself, and looked conspicuously what she genuinely felt, a sympathetic interest.  The note of plain direct sincerity which was Page’s hallmark never failed to arrest her attention, a little to arouse her wonder, and occasionally, for a reason that she did not like to dwell upon, somewhat to abash her.  The reason was that he never spoke for effect, and she often did.  He was not speaking for effect now:  he seemed scarcely even to be speaking to her, rather to be musingly formulating something for his own enlightenment.  He went on.  “The fact is that there is no sense to be made out of my situation in life.  I am like a man with a fine voice, who has no ear.”