With her radiantly sensuous youth in the first splendor of its opening, with this frank, direct look, she had a moment of brilliance to make the eyes of age shade themselves as against a dazzling brightness. The eyes of the man opposite her were not those of age. They rested on her, roused, kindling to heat. His head went up like a stag's. She felt a momentary hot throb of excitement, as though her body were one great fiddle-string, twanging under a vigorously plucking thumb. It was thrilling, it was startling, it was not altogether pleasant. The corners of her sensitive mouth twitched uncertainly. Mrs. Draper, observing from under her down-drooped lids this silent passage between the two, murmured amusedly to herself, "Ah, now you're shouting, my children!" CHAPTER XVI PLAYING WITH MATCHES There was much that was acrid about the sweetness of triumph which the next months brought Sylvia. The sudden change in her life had not come until there was an accumulation of bitterness in her heart the venting of which was the strongest emotion of that period of strong emotions. As she drove about the campus, perched on the high seat of the red-wheeled dog-cart, her lovely face looked down with none of Eleanor Hubert's gentleness into the envying eyes of the other girls. A high color burned in her cheeks, and her bright eyes were not soft. She looked continually excited. At home she was hard to live with, quick to take offense at the least breath of the adverse criticism which she felt, unspoken and forbearing but thick in the air about her. She neglected her music, she neglected her studies; she spent long hours of feverish toil over Aunt Victoria's chiffons and silks. There was need for many toilets now, for the incessantly recurring social events to which she went with young Fiske, chaperoned by Mrs. Draper, who had for her old rival and enemy, Mrs. Hubert, the most mocking of friendly smiles, as she entered a ballroom, the acknowledged sponsor of the brilliant young sensation of the college season.