age at Ravina and the small car which she'd drive herself.

The sum of all the activities that Mary proposed for herself added up to
a really exacting job; housekeeper, personal maid, chauffeur, chaperon
and secretary. It was with a rather mixed lot of emotions that John
thought of delivering her over to be tied to Paula's chariot wheels like
that. One of the two women who loved him serving the other in a capacity
so nearly menial! The thought of it gave him an odd sort of thrill even
while he shrank from it. Certainly, he would not have assented to it, had
it not been so unmistakably what Mary herself wanted. Her reasons for
wanting it he couldn't feel that he had quite fathomed.

There was, as a matter of fact, nothing fine-spun about them. It was a
job in the first place and gave her, therefore, she mordantly told
herself, an excuse for continuing to exist. It was an escape from Hickory
Hill. (Clear cowardice this was, she confessed. That situation would have
to be met and settled one way or the other before long; but her dread of
both the possible alternatives had mounted since her frustrated attempt
to confide in her father.) The third reason which she avowed to
everybody, was simple excited curiosity for a look into a new world. The
mystery and the glamour of it attracted her. Paula's proposal gave her
the opportunity to see what these strange persons were like when they
were not strutting their little while upon the stage.

Paula, of course, was, fundamentally, one of them. It was remarkable how
that simple discovery interpreted her. When you saw her surrounded by
them, working and quarreling with them, talking that horrible polyglot of
French, Italian and English, which she slipped into so easily, you
realized how exotic the environment of the Dearborn Avenue house must
have been to her and how strong a thing her passion for John Wollaston,
to enable her to endure five years of it,--of finikin social
observances,--of Aunt Lucile's standards of propriety!

Mary took real comfort in her companionship; found an immense release
from emotional pressure in it. One might quarrel furiously with Paula
(and it happened Mary very nearly did, as shall be related presently,
before they had been in the cottage three days), but one couldn't
possibly worry one's self about her, couldn't torture one's self feeling
things with Paula's nerves. That was the Wollaston trick. What frightful
tangles the thing that goes by the name o