He raised an eyebrow, but did not look up from the pear he was eating.  “To be responsible, as I feel I am, for the pitching into a cul-de-sac of the most promising young—­”

His wife broke in, “Responsible!  How in the world are you responsible!” she added quickly, as if at random, to prevent the reply which her husband was evidently about to cast at her.  “Besides, how do you know?—­one never knows how things will turn out—­she may—­she may marry him, and he may have a life which will give him more leisure for investigation than if—­”

Professor Marshall wiped his lips violently on his napkin and stood up.  “Nothing would induce her to marry him—­or any one else.  She’s extracted from marriage all she wants of it.  No, she’ll just keep him trailing along, in an ambiguous position, sickened and tantalized and fevered, till all the temper is drawn out of him—­and then hell be dropped,”

He turned away with an impatient fling of his head.  His wife stood up now and looked at him anxiously.  “Go play us something on the piano,” she urged.  This was not a common exhortation from her.  She cared very little for music, and with her usual honesty she showed, as a rule, a very passive attitude towards it.

Professor Marshall glanced at her with a flash of anger.  “Sometimes you count too much on my childishness, Barbara,” he said resentfully, and went out of the door without further words.

Decidedly the discomposing effect of Aunt Victoria’s visit lasted even after she had gone away.  But the next day was the beginning of the school term, the busy, regular routine was taken up, Sylvia was promoted to the 5A grade, and at home Father let her begin to learn the Pilgrim’s Chorus, from Tannhauser.

Life for the eager little girl moved quickly forward at its usual brisk pace, through several years to come.

CHAPTER VII

“WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT ...”

The public school to which the Marshall children went as soon as they were old enough was like any one of ten thousand public schools—­a large, square, many-windowed, extravagantly ugly building, once red brick, but long ago darkened almost to black by soft-coal smoke.  About it, shaded by three or four big cottonwood-trees, was an inclosed space of perhaps two acres of ground, beaten perfectly smooth by hundreds of trampling little feet, a hard, bare earthen floor, so entirely subdued to its fate that even in the long summer vacation no spear of grass could penetrate its crust to remind it that it was made of common stuff with fields and meadows.