The Little Lady of the Big House

He shook sober thought from his brain and returned to the bliss of memory, reaching his hand to another caress of his knee, his lips breathing again to the breathing of hers against them. He even reined Selim to a halt in order to gaze at the hollow resting place of his bent arm which she had filled.

Not until dinner did Graham see Paula again, and he found her the very usual Paula. Not even his eye, keen with knowledge, could detect any sign of the day's great happening, nor of the anger that had whitened her face and blazed in her eyes when she half-lifted her whip to strike him. In everything she was the same Little Lady of the Big House. Even when it chanced that her eyes met his, they were serene, untroubled, with no hint of any secret in them. What made the situation easier was the presence of several new guests, women, friends of Dick and her, come for a couple of days.

Next morning, in the music room, he encountered them and Paula at the piano.

"Don't you sing, Mr. Graham?" a Miss Hoffman asked.

She was the editor of a woman's magazine published in San Francisco, Graham had learned.

"Oh, adorably," he assured her. "Don't I, Mrs. Forrest?" he appealed.

"It is quite true," Paula smiled, "if for no other reason that he is kind enough not to drown me quite."

"And nothing remains but to prove our words," he volunteered. "There's a duet we sang the other evening--" He glanced at Paula for a sign. "--Which is particularly good for my kind of singing." Again he gave her a passing glance and received no cue to her will or wish. "The music is in the living room. I'll go and get it."

"It's the 'Gypsy Trail,' a bright, catchy thing," he heard her saying to the others as he passed out.

They did not sing it so recklessly as on that first occasion, and much of the thrill and some of the fire they kept out of their voices; but they sang it more richly, more as the composer had intended it and with less of their own particular interpretation. But Graham was thinking as he sang, and he knew, too, that Paula was thinking, that in their hearts another duet was pulsing all unguessed by the several women who applauded the song's close.

"You never sang it better, I'll wager," he told Paula.

For he had heard a new note in her voice. It had been fuller, rounder, with a generousness of volume that had vindicated that singing throat.