To which handsome tribute to La Chance’s high-lights, Professor Marshall returned with bitterness, “Good Lord, Vic, why do you come, then?”

She answered pleasantly, “I might ask in my turn why you stay.”  She went on, “I might also remind you that you and your children are the only human ties I have.”  She slipped a soft arm about Sylvia as she spoke, and turned the vivid, flower-like little face to be kissed.  When Aunt Victoria kissed her, Sylvia always felt that she had, like Diana in the story-book, stooped radiant from a shining cloud.

There was a pause in the conversation.  Professor Marshall faced the piano again and precipitated himself headlong into the diabolic accelerandos of “The Hall of the Mountain-King.”  His sister listened with extreme and admiring appreciation of his talent.  “Upon my word, Elliott,” she said heartily, “under the circumstances it’s incredible, but it’s true—­your touch positively improves.”

He stopped short, and addressed the air above the piano with passionate conviction.  “I stay because, thanks to my wife, I’ve savored here fourteen years of more complete reconciliation with life—­I’ve been vouchsafed more usefulness—­I’ve discovered more substantial reasons for existing than I ever dreamed possible in the old life—­than any one in that world can conceive!”

Aunt Victoria looked down at her beautiful hands clasped in her lap.  “Yes, quite so,” she breathed.  “Any one who knows you well must agree that whatever you are, or do, or find, nowadays, is certainly ’thanks to your wife.’”

Her brother flashed a furious look at her, and was about to speak, but catching sight of Sylvia’s troubled little face turned to him anxiously, gave only an impatient shake to his ruddy head—­now graying slightly.  A little later he said:  “Oh, we don’t speak the same language any more, Victoria.  I couldn’t make you understand—­you don’t know—­how should you?  You can’t conceive how, when one is really living, nothing of all that matters.  What does architecture matter, for instance?”

“Some of it matters very little indeed,” concurred his sister blandly.

This stirred him to an ungracious laugh.  “As for keeping up only human ties, isn’t a fortnight once every five years rather slim rations?”

“Ah, there are difficulties—­the Masonic Building—­” murmured Aunt Victoria, apparently at random.  But then, it seemed to Sylvia that they were always speaking at random.  For all she could see, neither of them ever answered what the other had said.

The best times were when she and Aunt Victoria were all alone together—­or with only the silent, swift-fingered, Pauline in attendance during the wonderful processes of dressing or undressing her mistress.  These occasions seemed to please Aunt Victoria best also.  She showed herself then so winning and gracious and altogether magical to the little girl that Sylvia forgot the uncomfortableness which always happened