“He has changed,” Sylvia went on, with her eyes fixed on Walter Hine.  “Oh, not merely toward me.  He has changed physically.  Can you understand?  He has grown nervous, restless, excitable, a thing of twitching limbs.  Oh, and that’s not all.  I will tell you.  This morning it seemed to me that the color of his eyes had changed.”

Chayne stared at her.  “Sylvia!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, I have not lost my senses,” she answered, and she resumed:  “I only noticed that there was an alteration at first.  I did not see in what the alteration lay.  Then I saw.  His eyes used to be light in color.  This morning they were dark.  I looked carefully to make sure, and so I understood.  The pupils of his eyes were so dilated that they covered the whole eyeball.  Can you think why?” and even as she asked, she looked at that clenched hand of hers as though the answer to that question as well lay hidden there.  “I am afraid,” she said once more; and upon that Chayne committed the worst of the many indiscretions which had signalized his courtship.

“You are afraid?  Sylvia!  Then let me take you away!”

At once Sylvia drew back.  Had Chayne not spoken, she would have told him all that there was to tell.  She was in the mood at this unguarded moment.  She would have told him that during these last days Walter Hine had taken to drink once more.  She would have opened that clenched fist and showed the thing it hid, even though the thing condemned her father beyond all hope of exculpation.  But Chayne had checked her as surely as though he had laid the palm of his hand upon her lips.  He would talk of love and flight, and of neither had she any wish to hear.  She craved with a great yearning for sympathy and a little kindness.  But Chayne was not content to offer what she needed.  He would add more, and what he added marred the whole gift for Sylvia.  She shook her head, and looking at him with a sad and gentle smile, said: 

“Love is for the happy people.”

“That is a hard saying, Sylvia,” Chayne returned, “and not a true one.”

“True to me,” said Sylvia, with a deep conviction, and as he advanced to her she raised her hand to keep him off.  “No, no,” she cried, and had he listened, he might have heard a hint of exasperation in her voice.  But he would not be warned.

“You can’t go on, living here, without sympathy, without love, without even kindness.  Already it is evident.  You are ill, and tired.  And you think to go on all your life or all your father’s life.  Sylvia, let me take you away!”

And each unwise word set him further and further from his aim.  It seemed to her that there was no help anywhere.  Chayne in front of her seemed to her almost as much her enemy as her father, who paced the lawn behind her arm in arm with Walter Hine.  She clasped her hands together with a quick sharp movement.

“I will not let you take me away,” she cried.  “For I do not love you”; and her voice had lost its gentleness and grown cold and hard.  Chayne began again, but whether it was with a renewal of his plea, she did not hear.  For she broke in upon him quickly: