t
she played up none of these sentimental possibilities, seemed, indeed,
serenely unaware of them. She treated him just as she had always treated
Mary--as a contemporary. From the beginning she had no trouble making him
talk. For one thing her acquaintance with France and Germany was intimate
enough to enable her to ask him questions which he found it pleasantly
stimulating to try to answer. As she felt her way to firmer ground with
him, she allowed what was evidently a perfectly spontaneous affection to
irradiate the look she turned upon him and to warm her lovely voice.

So she must have begun--as simply and irresistibly as that--in Vienna!

Mary tried hard to think of it as a highly skillful performance, but this
was an attitude she could not maintain. It was not a performance at all;
it was--just Paula, who, having taken her father away from her was now,
inevitably, going to take her brother too. Not because she meant
to--quite unconscious that she was doing any harm ("and of course she
isn't, except to a cat like me")--that was the maddening, and at the same
time, endearing thing about her.

For there was a broad impartiality about her spell that tugged at Mary
even while she forlornly watched Rush yielding to it. And the way it
affected Aunt Lucile was simply funny. She melted, visibly, like a
fragment left on the curb by the iceman, whenever Paula--turned the
current on. What made this the more striking was that Aunt Lucile's
normal mood to-day impressed Mary as rather aggressively sell-contained.
Was it just that Mary had forgotten how straight she sat and how
precisely she moved about? Had she always had that discreet significant
air, as if there were something she could talk about but didn't mean
to--not on any account? Or was there something going on here at home that
awaited--breathlessly awaited--discovery? Whatever it was, when Paula
turned upon her it went, laughably;--only it would have been a pretty
shaky sort of laugh.

It was after lunch that Paula electrified them by suggesting that they
all go together to a matinee. That's an illustration of the power she
had. To each of the three, to Lucile and to Mary as well as to the now
infatuated Rush, she could make a commonplace scheme like that seem an
irresistibly enticing adventure. Lucile recovered her balance first, but
it was not until Nat had fetched the morning paper and they had discussed
their choice of entertainments for two or three minutes th