These were the only memories of her first opera--confused, chaotic
brilliancy, paradise revealed: and long, long afterward, the carriage
flying up Fifth Avenue through darkness all gray with whirling snow.

* * * * *

Their eighteenth year dragged, beginning in physical and intellectual
indifference, but promised stormily as they became more accustomed to
glimpses of an outside world--a world teeming with restless young
people in unbelievable quantities.

Scott had begun to develop two traits: laziness and a tendency to
sullen, unspoken wrath. He took more liberty than was officially granted
him--more than Geraldine dared take--and came into collision with
Kathleen more often now. He boldly overstayed his leave in visiting his
few boy friends for an afternoon; he returned home alone on foot after
dusk, telling the chauffeur to go to the devil. Again and again he
remained out to dinner without permission, and, finally, one afternoon
quietly and stealthily cut his studies, slipped out of the house, and
reappeared about dinner-time, excited, inclined to be boisterously
defiant, admitting that he had borrowed enough money from a friend to go
to a matinée with some other boys, and that he would do it again if he
chose.

Also, to Kathleen's horror, he swore deliberately at table when Mr.
Tappan's name was mentioned; and Geraldine looked up with startled brown
eyes, divining in her brother something new--something that
unconsciously they both had long, long waited for--the revolt of youth
ere youth had been crushed for ever from the body which encased it.