It was only two months before Felix Morrison arrived in Paris.  They had expected him.  They had spoken of the chance of his arrival on this or that day.  Sylvia had rehearsed all the possible forms of self-possession for their first meeting; but on the rainy February afternoon when she came in from representing Aunt Victoria at a reception and saw him sitting by the fire, her heart sank down and stopped for an instant, and when it went on beating she could hear no sound but the drumming of her pulse.  The back of his chair was towards her.  All she could see as she stood for a moment in the doorway was his head, the thick, graying dark hair, and one long-fingered, sensitive, beautiful hand lying on the arm of the chair.  At the sight, she felt in her own palm the soft firmness of those fingers as palpably as ever she had in reality.

The instant’s pause before Aunt Victoria saw her standing there, gave her back her self-control.  When Mrs. Marshall-Smith turned and gravely held out her hand, Sylvia came forward with a sober self-possession.  The man turned too, sprang up with an exclamation apparently of surprise, “Miss Marshall, you here!” and extended his hand.  Sylvia, searching his face earnestly, found it so worn, saw in it such dark traces of suffering and sorrow, that the quick tears of sympathy stood in her eyes.

Her dread of the meeting, a morbid dread that had in it an acknowledged element of horror, vanished.  Before that moment she had seen only Molly’s face as it had looked the day of their desperate talk, white and despairing, and resolutely bent over the steering-wheel.  She had not been able to imagine Felix’ face at all, had instinctively put it out of her mind; but as she looked into it now, her fear of it disappeared.  It was the fine, sensitive face of a fine, sensitive man who has known a great shock.  What had she feared she would see there?  He was still holding her hand, very much affected at seeing her, evidently still in a super-sensitive condition when everything affected him strongly.  “She loved you—­she admired you so!” he said, his wonderful voice wavering and uncertain.  Sylvia’s tears fell openly at this.  She sat down on a low stool near her aunt’s knees.  “I can’t believe it—­I haven’t been able to believe it!” she told him; “Molly was—­she was more alive than anybody I ever saw!”

“If you had seen her that morning,” he told them both,—­“like a flame of vitality—­almost frightening—­so vivid.  She waved good-bye, and then that was not enough; she got out of the car and ran back up the hotel-step to say good-bye for just those few moments—­and was off—­such youth! such youth in all her—­”

Sylvia cried out, “Oh, no! no! it’s too dreadful!” She felt the horror sweep down on her again; but now it did not bear Felix’ face among its baneful images.  He stood there, shocked, stricken, but utterly bewildered, utterly ignorant—­for the moment in her relief she had called his ignorance utter innocence ...