Austin said:  “I have been trying to say good-bye all afternoon.  I am going back to America tomorrow.”

Sylvia was so startled and shocked that she could not believe her ears.  Her heart beat hard.  To an incoherent, stammered inquiry of hers, he answered, “It’s my Colorado property—­always that.  It spoils everything.  I must go back, and make a decision that’s needed there.  I’ve been trying to tell you.  But I can’t.  Every time I have tried, I have not dared.  If I told you, and you should beckon me back, I should not be strong enough to go on.  I could not leave you, Sylvia, if you lifted your hand.  And that would be the end of the best of us both.”  He had turned and faced her, his hands back of him, gripping the railing.  The deep vibrations of his voice transported her to that never-forgotten moment at Versailles.  He went on:  “When it is—­when the decision is made, I’ll write you.  I’ll write you, and then—­I shall wait to hear your answer!” From inside the room Felix poured a dashing spray of diamond-like trills upon them.

She murmured something, she did not know what; her breathing oppressed by her emotion.  “Won’t you—­shan’t we see you—­here—?” She put her hand to her side, feeling an almost intolerable pain.

He moved near her, and, to bring himself to her level, knelt down on one knee, putting his elbows on the arm of her chair.  The dusk had fallen so thickly that she had not seen his face before.  She now saw that his lips were quivering, that he was shaking from head to foot.  “It will be for you to say, Sylvia,” his voice was rough and harsh with feeling, “whether you see me again.”  He took her hands in his and covered them with kisses—­no grave tokens of reverence these, as on the day at Versailles, but human, hungry, yearning kisses that burned, that burned—­

And then he was gone.  Sylvia was there alone in the enchanted twilight, the Triumphal Arch before her, the swept and garnished and spangled city beneath her.  She lifted her hand and saw that he had left on it not only kisses but tears.  If he had been there then, she would have thrown herself into his arms.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

SYLVIA COMES TO THE WICKET-GATE

Three weeks passed before his letter came.  The slow, thrilling crescendo of May had lifted the heart up to a devout certainty of June.  The leaves were fully out, casting a light, new shadow on the sprinkled streets.  Every woman was in a bright-colored, thin summer dress, and every young woman looked alluring.  The young men wore their hats tilted to one side, swung jaunty canes as they walked, and peered hopefully under the brim of every flowered feminine headdress.  The days were like golden horns of plenty, spilling out sunshine, wandering perfumed airs, and the heart-quickening aroma of the new season.  The nights were cool and starry.  Every one in Paris spent as much as possible of every hour out of doors.  The pale-blue sky flecked with creamy clouds seemed the dome, and the city the many-colored pavement of some vast building, so grandly spacious that the sauntering, leisurely crowds thronging the thoroughfares seemed no crowds at all, but only denoted a delightful sociability.