sleeplessness had turned to restlessness, to loneliness, to an awakening
perception of what she lacked and needed and began to desire. For that
sad void, peopled at intervals through her brief years with a vague
mother-phantom, had, in the new crisis of her career, become suddenly an
empty desolation, frightening her with her own utter isolation. Fill it
now she could not, now that she needed that ghost of child-comfort, that
shadowy refuge, that sweet shape she had fashioned out of dreams to
symbolise a mother she had never known.

Driven she knew not why, she had crept from her room in search of the
still, warm, fragrant nest and the whispered reassurance and the caress
she had never before endured. Yes, now she craved it, invited it, longed
for safe arms around her, the hovering hand on her hair. Was this
Sylvia?

And Grace Ferrall, clearing her sleepy eyes, amazed, incredulous of the
cold, child-like hands upon her shoulders, caught her in her arms with a
little laugh and sob and drew her to her breast, to soothe and caress
and reassure, to make up to her all she could of what is every child's
just heritage.

And for a long while Sylvia, lying there, told her nothing--because she
did not know how--merely a word, a restless question half ashamed, barely
enough to shadow forth the something stirring her toward an awakening in
a new world, where with new eyes she might catch glimpses of those dim
and splendidly misty visions that float through sunlit silences when a
young girl dreams awake.

And at length, gravely, innocently, she spoke of her engagement, and the
worldly possibilities before her; of the man she was to marry, and her