There was another
silence, and then, looking in the starlight at her companion, the girl
saw with consternation that the quiet tears were running down her
cheeks. She stopped short, "Oh ... _oh_!" she cried. She caught up the
other's hand in a bewildered surprise. She had not the faintest idea
what could cause her hostess' emotion. She was horribly afraid she
would lose the trolley. Her face painted vividly her agitation and her
impatience.
Mrs. Fiske drew back her hand and wiped her eyes with her palm. "Well,
I must be going back," she said. She looked dimly at the girl's face,
and suddenly threw her arms about Sylvia's neck, clinging to her. She
murmured incoherent words, the only ones which Sylvia could make out
being, "I can't--I can't--I _can't!_"
What it was she could not do, remained an impenetrable mystery to
Sylvia, for at that moment she turned away quickly, and went back up
the driveway, her face in her hands. Sylvia hesitated, penetrated,
in spite of her absorption in her own affairs, by a vague pity, but
hearing in the distance the clang of the trolley-car's bell, she
herself turned and ran desperately down the driveway. She reached the
public road just in time to stop the heavy car, and to swing herself
lightly on, to all appearances merely a rather unusually well-set-up,
fashionably dressed young lady, presenting to the heterogeneous
indifference of the other passengers in the car even a more
ostentatiously abstracted air than is the accepted attitude for young
ladies traveling alone.
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