The
cold, pure air blew so strongly in her face that she closed her eyes.
When she opened them again the sun was shining.
She started up nervously, still under the influence of a vivid
dream--strange.... Then as she blinked and rubbed her eyes she saw her
mother standing by the bed, with a pale, composed face.
"It's nine o'clock, Sylvia," she said, "and Mr. Fiske is downstairs,
asking to see you. He tells me that you and he are engaged to be
married."
Sylvia was instantly wide awake. "Oh no! Oh no!" she said
passionately. "No, we're not! I won't be! I won't see him!" She
looked about her wildly, and added, "I'll write him that--just wait a
minute." She sprang out of bed, caught up a pad of paper, and wrote
hastily: "It was all a mistake--I don't care for you at all--not a
bit! I hope I shall never have to speak to you again." "There," she
said, thrusting it into her mother's hands. She stood for a moment,
shivering in her thin nightgown in the icy draught, and then jumped
back into bed again.
Her mother came back in a few moments, closed the windows, and opened
the register. There was not in her silence or in a line of her quiet
presence the faintest hint of curiosity about Sylvia's actions.
She had always maintained in theory, and now at this crisis with
characteristic firmness of purpose acted upon her theory, that
absolutely unforced confidence was the only kind worth having, and
that moreover, unless some help was necessary, it might be as well for
the younger generation early to acquire the strengthening capacity to
keep its own intimate experiences to the privacy of its own soul,
and learn to digest them and feed upon them without the dubiously
peptonizing aid of blundering adult counsel.
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