Page 211 (1/1)

All day long squadrons of white gulls wheeled and sailed in the sky above the snowy expanse of park where the great, rectangular sheets of water gli As she sat at her desk she could see theray squares of sky frao she had seen the of unfelt terant rain Now, the false phantolare of winter, stupefying hope, stunning desire, clogging the life essence in all young, living things The first vague su aspiration, the first delicate, indrawn breath, were stilled to deathly immobility

Sylvia, at her escritoire, chin cradled in her hollowed hand, sat listlessly inspecting her mail--the usual pile of bills and advertisements, social demands and interested appeals, with here and there a frivolous note from some intimate to punctuate the endless ione; the Belwether establishh another day Various specialists, who cared for the health and beauty of her body, had entered and one to Tuxedo for the week's end; her maid had bronchitis; two horses required the veterinary, and the kitchen range a neater-back

Cards had co Austin Wadsworth's wedding to a Charleston girl of ru; a live llaed, had consented to underuests

"Would Sylvia be ready for the inspection of i built by Constantine?

"When-"Would she receive the courteous agent of 'The Reigning Beauties of Manhattan,' to arrange for her portrait and biographical sketch?

"When-"Would she realise that Jefferson B Doty could turn earth into heaven for any young chatelaine by affixing to the laundry his anti- sixty sterilised hot-air blasts in thirty seconds, at a cost of one-tenth of one mill per blast?

"And when--"

But she turned her head, looking wearily across the roo fire beside which Mrs Ferrall sat, nibbling mint-paste, very serious over one of those books that "everybody was reading"

"How far have you read?" inquired Sylvia without interest, turning over a new letter to cut with her paper-knife

Grace ruffled the uncut pages of her book without looking up, then yawned sha with hireeable she'll marry him … Pleasant situation, isn't it? Nice book, very; and they say that so her small, brilliant teeth--"I wonder what sort of people write these immoral romances!"