"The pergola's lovely," suggested Molly. She took her close motor-hat
from the pure gold of her hair with a rather listless air.

"All right--the pergola!" agreed Sylvia, perhaps a little too
anxiously. In spite of herself, she gave, and she knew she was giving,
the effect of needing somehow to make something up to Molly....




CHAPTER XXV

NOTHING IN THE LEAST MODERN


Sylvia was sitting in the garden, an unread book on her knees,
dreaming among red and yellow and orange gladioli. She looked with a
fixed, bright, beatific stare at the flame-colored flowers and did not
see them. She saw only Felix Morrison, she heard only his voice, she
was brimming with the sense of him. In a few moments she would go into
the house and find him in the darkened living-room, as he had been
every afternoon for the last fortnight, ostensibly come in to lounge
away the afternoon over a book, really waiting for her to join
him. And when she came in, he would look up at her, that wonderful
penetrating deep look of his ... and she would welcome him with her
eyes.

And then they would talk! Judith and Arnold would be playing tennis,
oblivious of the heat, and Aunt Victoria would be annihilating the
tedious center of the day by sleep. Nobody would interrupt them for