Sylvia winced, actually and physically, at this speech, which brought back to her with a sharp flick the egregiousness of her absurd self-deception.  What a simpleton she had been—­what a little naive, provincial simpleton!  In spite of her high opinion of her own cleverness and knowledge of people, how stupidly steeped she had been in the childish, idiotic American tradition of entire disinterestedness in the relations of men and women.  It was another instance of how betrayed she constantly was, in any manoeuver in the actual world, by the fatuous idealism which had so colored her youth—­she vented her emotion in despising that idealism and thinking of hard names to call it.

“... though of course you showed your intelligence by not really caring to,” went on Mrs. Marshall-Smith; “it would have meant a crippled life for both of you.  Felix hasn’t a cent more than he needs for himself.  If he was going to marry at all, he was forced to marry carefully.  Indeed, it has occurred to me that he may have thrown himself into this, because he was in danger of losing his head over you, and knew how fatal it would be.  For you, you lovely thing of great possibilities, you need a rich soil for your roots, too, if you’re to bloom out as you ought to.”

Sylvia, receiving this into a sore and raw consciousness, said to herself with an embittered instinct for cynicism that she had never heard more euphonious periphrases for selling yourself for money.  For that was what it came down to, she had told herself fiercely a great many times during the night.  Felix had sold himself for money as outright as ever a woman of the streets had done.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith, continuing steadily to talk (on the theory that talking prevents too great concentration of thought), and making the round of all the possible things to say, chanced at this moment upon a qualification to this theory of Morrison’s conduct which for an instant caught Sylvia’s attention, “—­and then there’s always the possibility that even if you had cared to—­Molly might have been too much for you, for both of you.  She always has had just what she wanted—­and people who have, get the habit.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, in the little you’ve seen of her, but it’s very apparent to me, knowing her from childhood up as I have, that there’s a slight coarseness of grain in Molly, when it’s a question of getting what she wants.  I don’t mean she’s exactly horrid.  Molly’s a dear in her way, and I’m very fond of her, of course.  If she can get what she wants without walking over anybody’s prostrate body, she’ll go round.  But there’s a directness, a brilliant lack of fine shades in Molly’s grab....  It makes one remember that her Montgomery grandfather had firmness of purpose enough to raise himself from an ordinary Illinois farmer to arbiter of the wheat pit.  Such impossible old aunts—­such cousins—­occasionally crop up still from the Montgomery connection.  But all with the same crude force.  It’s almost impossible for a temperament like Felix’s to contend with a nature like that.”