"_You_ know what I mean by character as
well as I."
By the time they were back of the Little Trianon, this beginning had
led them naturally enough away from the frivolities of historical
conversation to serious considerations, namely themselves. The start
had been a reminiscence of Sylvia's, induced by the slow fall of
golden leaves from the last of the birches into the still water of the
lake in the midst of Marie Antoinette's hamlet. They stopped on an
outrageously rustic bridge, constructed quite in the artificially
rural style of the place, and, leaning on the railing, watched in a
fascinated silence the quiet, eddying descent of the leaves. There was
not a breath of wind. The leaves detached themselves from the tree
with no wrench. They loosened their hold gradually, gradually, and
finally out of sheer fullness of maturity floated down to their graves
with a dreamy content.
"I never happened to see that effect before," said Page. "I supposed
leaves were detached only by wind. It's astonishingly peaceful, isn't
it?"
"I saw it once before," said Sylvia, her eyes fixed on the noiseless
arabesques traced by the leaves in their fall--"at home in La Chance.
I'll never forget it." She spoke in a low tone as though not to break
the charmed silence about them, and, upon his asking her for the
incident, she went on, almost in a murmur: "It isn't a story you could
possibly understand.
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