They all, including
Sylvia herself, knew the tranquillity of an extended period of peace.
It began abruptly, like opening a door into a new room. Sylvia had
dreaded the beginning of the winter term and the inevitable sight of
Jerry, the enforced crossings of their paths. But Jerry never returned
to his classes at all. The common talk was to the effect that the
Colonel had "worked his pull" to have Jerry admitted to the bar
without further preliminaries. After some weeks of relief, it occurred
to Sylvia that perhaps Jerry had dreaded meeting her as much as she
had seeing him. For whatever reason, the campus saw young Fiske no
more, except on the day in May when he passed swiftly across it on his
way to the Hubert house where Eleanor, very small and white-faced,
waited for him under a crown of orange blossoms.
Sylvia did not go to the wedding, although an invitation had come,
addressed economically and compendiously to "Professor and Mrs.
Marshall and family." It was a glorious spring day and in her Greek
history course they had just reached the battle of Salamis, at the
magnificent recital of which Sylvia's sympathetic imagination leaped
up rejoicing, as all sympathetic imaginations have for all these many
centuries. She was thrilling to a remembered bit of "The Persians" as
she passed by the Hubert house late that afternoon. She was chanting
to herself, "The right wing, well marshaled, led on foremost in good
order, and we heard a mighty shout--'Sons of the Greeks! On! Free your
country!'" She did not notice that she trod swiftly across a trail of
soiled rice in the Hubert driveway.
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