If he had burst into loud profanity, the effect could not have been more shocking. "_Oh!_" said Sylvia, vexed and put out. She began to walk forward. Morrison in his turn gave an exclamation which seemed the vent of long-stored exasperation, and said with heat: "Look here, Page, you're getting to be a perfect monomaniac on the subject! What earthly good does it do your man with a pick to ruin a fine moment by lugging him in!" They were all advancing up the avenue now, Sylvia between the two men. They talked at each other across her. She listened intently, with the feeling that Morrison was voicing for her the question she had been all her life wishing once for all to let fly at her parents' standards: "What good _did_ it do anybody to go without things you might have? Conditions were too vast for one person to influence." "No earthly good," said Page peaceably; "I didn't say it did him any good. Miss Marshall asked me what all this made me think of, and I told her." "It is simply becoming an obsession with you!" urged Morrison. Sylvia remembered what Page had said about his irritation years ago when Austin had withdrawn from the collector's field. "Yes, it's becoming an obsession with me," agreed Page thoughtfully. He spoke as he always did, with the simplest manner of direct sincerity. "You ought to make an effort against it, really, my dear fellow. It's simply spoiling your life for you!" "Worse than that, it's making me bad company!" said Page whimsically. "I either ought to reform or get out." Morrison set his enemy squarely before him and proceeded to do battle. "I believe I know just what's in your mind, Page: I've been watching it grow in you, ever since you gave up majolica." "I never claimed that was anything but the blindest of impulses!" protested Page mildly.