of Brass violated and the Princess carried away by the
_jinn_ or upon the magic carpet--whichever it was--to a world where none
of them could follow her. Suppose John Wollaston bereft again. Would not
Mary's old place be hers once more? Would not everything be just as it
had been during those two years before her father went to Vienna?

But some instinct in her revolted utterly at that. It was an instinct
that she could not completely reason out. But she knew that if such a
calamity befell, her old place would not exist or would be intolerable
if it did.

Suppose again:--suppose that Paula's rebellion could be somehow
frustrated. Would it be possible to save Paula for her father by saving
March from Paula? In plain words, by diverting him from Paula to herself.

That was a disgustingly vulgar way of putting it. But wasn't it what she
meant? And if she couldn't be honest with her own thoughts.... Well then,
were her powers of attraction great enough, even if they were consciously
exerted to the utmost, to outpull Paula's with a musician, with a man
whose songs she could sing as she had sung to-night?

That moment in Annie's old bedroom off the nursery supplied concretely
enough the answer to her question. They had been soul to soul in there,
they two. There was no language to describe the intimacy of it, except
perhaps the hackneyed phrases of the wedding service which had lost all
their meaning. And while they had stood together in the half dark, Paula
had opened the door, bringing the light in with her. She had taken him
confidently in her strong hands and kissed him and led him away without
one hesitating backward thought.

And the truth seemed clear enough, incandescent, now she looked back at
it, that it was Paula who had possessed him all along. That moment which
she had called her own had been Paula's. Mary had got it because she had
happened to come in and sit down beside him. She had, as it were, picked
his pocket. She stood convicted the moment the rightful owner appeared.
That was how much her chance of "saving" March from Paula amounted to.

What a hypocrite she had been to use that phrase even in her thoughts.
Save him from Paula, indeed! Paula could give him, even if she gave only
the half loaf, all he needed. She could inspire his genius, float it
along on the broad current of her own energy. Compared to that, what
could Mary give? What would it, her one possible gift, amount to?

She pulled herself