But on this evening Sylvia felt that the world was particularly odious, for she had suffered a first humiliation in her own eyes. She thought that she had lowered herself in the colonel’s estimation, and she had discovered that she had made a great mistake with herself about him.
"I hate the world!" she repeated, in a lower tone, almost to herself, and her eyes gleamed with young anger, while her delicate, curving lips just showed her small white teeth.
"That is no reason for hating yourself," he said gently.
She started and turned her eyes to him. Then she blushed and looked away.
"You must not guess my thoughts," she answered. "It is not kind."
"Oh--you could not help it, of course. I was so foolish to-day."
The blush deepened, and she said nothing more. The colonel returned to his own secret trouble, and on Sylvia’s other side Miss Wimpole was silently planning a charitable institution of unusual severity, while she peeled an orange with the most scrupulous neatness and precision.
Sylvia went to her own room after dinner, still wondering what had happened to her on her birthday. There is an age at which most of us unexpectedly come across the truth about ourselves, and sometimes about others, and it generally happens that in our recollection the change turns upon one day, or even one hour.
The shock is sudden and unexpected. Floating down a quick smooth stream in a boat, a man is aware of motion, as he watches the bank without realizing the strength of the flowing water; but when the skiff is suddenly checked by any obstacle in midstream, the whole force of the river rushes upon it, and past it, and perhaps over it, in an instant. Something of the same sort happens now and then in our lives. The great illusion of childhood carries us along at a speed of which we have no idea, in the little boat which is the immediate and undeniable reality of near surroundings, the child’s cradle afloat upon a fiction which is wide and deep and strong, and sometimes we are grown men and women before our small craft strikes upon a shoal of truth, with a dash that throws us from the thwart, and frightens the bravest of us. There we stick fast upon the rough fact for a while, and the flood that was so smooth and pleasant rushes past us, foaming and seething and breaking against the boat’s side and threatening to tear her to pieces. And if the tide is ebbing at the river’s mouth, we may be left high and dry upon the sharp reality for a long time; but if not, the high water will presently float us, and off we shall spin again, smoothly and safely, on the bosom of the sweet untrue.