She felt moved, stirred, shaken. But
it was not until the brief winter sun was beginning to set red
across the open reaches of field and meadow that her poisoned heart
overflowed. "Oh, Mother--!" she exclaimed in an unhappy tone, and said
no more. She knew no words to phrase what was in her mind.
"Yes, dear," said her mother gently. She looked at her daughter
anxiously, expectantly, with a passion of yearning in her eyes, but
she said no more than those two words.
There was a silence. Sylvia was struggling for expression. They
continued to walk swiftly through the cold, ruddy, sunset air, the
hard-frozen road ringing beneath their rapid advance. Sylvia clasped
her hands together hard in her muff. She felt that something in her
heart was dying, was suffocating for lack of air, and yet that it
would die if she brought it to light. She could find no words at all
to ask for help, agonizing in a shy reticence impossible for an adult
to conceive. Finally, beginning at random, very hurriedly, looking
away, she brought out, faltering, "Mother, _is_ it true that all men
are--that when a girl marries she must expect to--aren't there _any_
men who--" She stopped, burying her burning face in her muff.
Her words, her tone, the quaver of desperate sincerity in her accent,
brought her mother up short. She stopped abruptly and faced the girl.
"Sylvia, look at me!" she said in a commanding voice which rang loud
in the frosty silences about them.
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