"Yes. But would it make life any easier for him?" asked Sylvia.
"How--to know that you had been dragged down?"
"No. I mean could I do anything for him?"
"No woman ever did. That is a sentimental falsehood of the emotional. No woman ever did help a man in that way. Sylvia, if love were the only question, and if you do truly love him, I--well, I suppose I'd be fool enough to advise you to be a fool. Even then you'd be sorry. You know what your future may be; you know what you are fitted for. What can you do without Howard? In this town your rôle would be a very minor one without Howard's money, and you know it."
"Yes, I know it."
"And your sacrifice could not help that doomed boy."
Sylvia nodded assent.
"Then, is there any choice? Is there any question of what to do?"
Sylvia looked out into the winter sky, through the tops of snowy trees; everywhere the stark, deathly rigidity of winter. Under it, frozen, lay the rain that had scented the air. Under her ambition lay the ghosts of yesterday.
"No," she said, "there is no question of choice. I know what must be."
Grace, seated in the firelight, looked up as Sylvia rose from her desk and came across the room; and when she sank down on the rug at her feet, resting her cheek against the elder woman's knees, nothing was said for a long time--a time of length sufficient to commit a memory to its grave, lay it away decently and in quiet befitting.
Sore doubt assailed Grace Ferrall, guiltily aware that once again she had meddled; and in the calm tenor of her own placid, marital satisfaction, looking backward along the pleasant path she had trodden with its little monuments to love at decent intervals amid the agreeable monotony of content, her heart and conscience misgave her lest she had counselled this young girl wrongly, committing her to the arid lovelessness which she herself had never known.
Leaning there, her fingers lingering in light caress on Sylvia's bright hair, for every doubt she brought up argument, to every sentimental wavering within her heart she opposed the chilling reason of common sense. Destruction to happiness lay in Sylvia's yielding to her caprice for Siward. There was other happiness in the world besides the non-essential one of love. That must be Sylvia's portion. And after all--and after all, love was a matter of degree; and it was well for Sylvia that she had the malady so lightly--well for her that it had advanced so little, lest she suspect what its crowning miracles might be and fall sick of a passion for what she had forever lost.