a quick hot wave of scarlet flamed up over her face. "He was not a
decent man," she said briefly, and went on: "It frightened me almost
to death before I got my bearings: I was just a little girl and I
hadn't understood anything--and I don't _understand_ much now. But I
did learn one thing from all that--I learned to know when a man isn't
decent. I can't tell you how I know--it's all over him--it's all over
me--it's his eyes, the way he stands, the expression of his mouth--I
don't only see it--I feel it--I feel it the way a thermometer feels
it when you put a match under the bulb ... I _know_!" She brought her
extravagant, her preposterous, her ignorant, her incredibly convincing
claims to an abrupt end.

"And you 'feel' that I ..." began Arnold, and could not go on.

"I'd like you for my brother," she said gently.

He tried to laugh at her, but the honest tears were in his eyes.
"You don't know what you're talking about, you silly dear," he said
unsteadily, "but I'm awfully glad you came to Lydford."

With her instinct for avoiding breaks, rough places, Sylvia quickly
glided into a transition from this speech back into less personal
talk. "Another queer thing about that experience I've never
understood:--it cured me of being so crazy about clothes. You wouldn't
think it would have anything to do with _that_, would you? And I don't
see how it did. Oh, I don't mean I don't dearly love pretty dresses
now. I _do_. And I spend altogether too much time thinking about
them--but it's not the same. Somehow the poison is out. I used to be
like a drunkard who can't get a drink, when I saw girls have things
I didn't. I suppose," she speculated philosophically, "I suppose any