They had come to a bend in the slowly flowing river, where, instead of torch-bright maples and poplars, rank upon rank of somber pines marched away to the summit of a steeply ascending foothill. The river was clouded dark with their melancholy reflections. On their edge, overhanging the water, stood a single sumac, a standard-bearer with a thousand little down-drooping flags of crimson. "Oh," said Sylvia, smitten with admiration. She sat down on a rock partly because she wanted to admire at her leisure, partly because she was the kind of a girl who looks well sitting on a rock; and as she was aware of this latter motive, she felt a qualm of self-scorn. What a cheap vein of commonness was revealed in her--in every one--by the temptation of a great fortune! Morrison had succumbed entirely. She was nowadays continually detecting in herself motives which made her sick. Page stretched his great length on the dry leaves at her feet. Any other man would have rolled a cigarette. It was one of his oddities that he never smoked. Sylvia looked down at his thoughtful, clean face and reflected wonderingly that he seemed the only person not warped by money. Was it because he had it, or was it because he was a very unusual person? He was looking partly at the river, at the pines, at the flaming tree, and partly at the human embodiment of the richness and color of autumn before him. After a time Sylvia said: "There's Cassandra. She's the only one who knows of the impending doom. She's trying to warn the pines." It had taken her some moments to think of this. Page accepted it with no sign that he considered it anything remarkable, with the habit of a man for whom people produced their best: "She's using some very fine language for her warning, but like some other fine language it's a trifle misapplied. She forgets that no doom hangs over the pines. _She's_ the fated one. They're safe enough." Sylvia clasped her hands about her knees and looked across the dark water at the somber trees. "And yet they don't seem to be very cheerful about it." It was her opinion that they were talking very cleverly. "Perhaps," suggested Page, rolling over to face the river--"perhaps she's not prophesying doom at all, but blowing a trumpet-peal of exultation over her own good fortune. The pines may be black with envy of her." Sylvia enjoyed this rather macabre fancy with all the zest of healthful youth, secure in the conviction of its own immortality. "Yes, yes, life's ever so much harder than death." Page dissented with a grave irony from the romantic exaggeration of this generalization. "I don't suppose the statistics as to the relative difficulty of life and death are really very reliable."