And Sylvia was not to be outdone.  She turned her own eyes away from it as sedulously as they.  She never let a conscious thought dwell on it—­and like all other repressed and strangled currents of thought, it grew swollen and restive, filling her subconsciousness with monstrous, unformulated speculations.  She was extremely absorbed in the luxury, the amenity, the smooth-working perfection of the life about her.  She consciously concentrated all her faculties on her prodigious opportunity for aesthetic growth, for appreciation of the fine and marvelous things about her.  She let go the last scruple which had held her back from accepting from Aunt Victoria the shower of beautiful things to wear which that connoisseur in wearing apparel delighted to bestow upon an object so deserving.  She gave a brilliant outward effect of enjoying life as it came which was as impersonal as that of the two men who looked at her so frequently, and this effect went as deep as her will-power had command.  But beneath—­unacknowledged waves beating on the shore of her life and roughly, irresistibly, rudely fashioning it—­rolled a ground-swell of imperious questionings....

Was Felix’ perfect manner of impersonal interest solely due to the delicacy of his situation?  Did he feel now that he was as rich as Austin ...?  But, on the other hand, why did he come now and put himself in a situation which required the utmost efforts for unconsciousness on everybody’s part if not because Austin’s being there had meant he dared not wait?  And Austin’s change of manner since the arrival of the other man, the film of ceremony which had slid imperceptibly over the tender friendliness of his manner, did that mean that he would not take advantage of Morrison’s temporarily tied hands, but, with a scrupulousness all his own, would wait until the race was even and they stood foot to foot on the same level?  Or had he noticed at once, with those formidably clear eyes of his, some shade of her manner to Felix which she had not been able to command, and was he waiting for some move from her?  And how could she move until she had some sign from Felix and how could he give a sign?  There was nothing to do but to wait, to hope that the thin ice which now bent perilously under the pleasant ceremonies of their life in common, would hold them until....  Even the wildest up-leaping wave of that tossing tide never went beyond the blank wall which came after the “until....”

There were other moments when all that surge swung back and forth to the rhythm of the poisoned recollection of her unacknowledged humiliation in Lydford; when, inflamed with determination to avoid another such blow in the face, Sylvia almost consciously asked herself, self-contemptuously, “Who am I, an obscure, poverty-stricken music-teacher out of the West, to fancy that I have but to choose between two such men, two such fortunes?” but against this counted strongly the constantly recurring revelations of the