ed
figure, sitting at ease in a far corner, and giving to the scene a
pleasant though not remarkably respectful attention.

On such an afternoon in January, the usual routine had been preserved.
The last of the callers, carrying off Mrs. Marshall-Smith with her,
had taken an urbane, fair-spoken departure. Sylvia turned back from
the door of the salon, feeling a fine glow of conscious amenity, and
found that Austin Page's mood differed notably from her own. He had
lingered for a tete-a-tete, as was so frequently his habit, and now
stood before the fire, his face all one sparkle of fun. "Don't they
do it with true American fervor!" he remarked. "It would take a
microscope to tell the difference between them and a well-rehearsed
society scene on the stage of the Francais! That's their model,
of course. It is positively touching to see old Colonel Patterson
subduing his twang and shutting the lid down on his box of comic
stories. I should think Mrs. Patterson might allow him at least that
one about the cowboy and the tenderfoot who wanted to take a bath!"

The impression made on Sylvia had not in the least corresponded to
this one; but with a cat-like twist of her flexible mind, she fell
on her feet, took up his lead, and deftly produced the only suitable
material she had at command. "They _seem_ to talk well, about such
interesting things, and yet I can never remember anything they say.
It's odd," she sat down near the fireplace with a great air of
pondering the strange phenomenon.

"No, it isn't odd," he explained, dropping into the chair opposite her
and stretching out his long legs to the blaze. "It's only people who
do something, who have anything to say. These folks don't do anything
except get up and sit down the right way, and run their voices up and
down the scale so that their great-aunts would faint away to hear
them! They haven't any energy left over. If some one would only write
out suitable parts for them to memorize, the performance would be
perfect!" He threw back his head and laughed aloud, the sound ringing
through the room. Sylvia had seldom seen him so light-heartedly
amused. He explained: "I haven't seen this sort of solemn, genteel
posturing for several years now, and I find it too delicious! To see
the sweet, invincible American naivete welling up in their intense
satisfaction in being so sophisticated,--oh, the harmless dears!" He
cried out upon them gaily, with the indulgence of an adult who look