Such was the
impression that one got of her, even when her words most denied it.
She might be saying world-weary and cynical things, out of the
maxims of Lady Dee; but there was still the eagerness, the sympathy,
surging beneath and lifting her words.
The crown of her loveliness was her unconsciousness of self. Even
though she might be talking of herself, frankly admitting her
beauty, she was really thinking of other people, how she could get
to them to help them. This I must emphasize, because, apart from
jesting, I would not have it thought that I had fallen under the
spell of a beautiful countenance, combined with a motor-car and a
patrician name. There were things about Sylvia that were
aristocratic, that could be nothing else; but she could be her same
lovely self in a cottage--as I shall prove to you before I finish
with the story of her life.
I was in love. At that time I was teaching myself German, and I sat
one day puzzling out two lines of Goethe:
"Oden and Thor, these two thou knowest; Freya, the heavenly, knowest
thou not."
And I remember how I cried aloud in sudden delight: _"I know her!"_
For a long time that was one of my pet names--"Freya dis
Himmlische!" I only heard of one other that I preferred--when in
course of time she told me about Frank Shirley, and how she had
loved him, and how their hopes had been wrecked.
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