full of spirits, laughter, and the latest jokes and catches sprung in
the latest slang.

"I see right now," Graham told Paula, "if your place continues to be
the caravanserai which it has been since my arrival, that I might as
well give up trying to remember names and people."

"I don't blame you," she laughed concurrence. "But these are
neighbors. They drop in any time. Mrs. Watson, there, next to Dick, is
of the old land-aristocracy. Her grandfather, Wicken, came across the
Sierras in 1846. Wickenberg is named after him. And that pretty dark-
eyed girl is her daughter...."

And while Paula gave him a running sketch of the chance guests, Graham
heard scarce half she said, so occupied was he in trying to sense his
way to an understanding of her. Naturalness was her keynote, was his
first judgment. In not many moments he had decided that her key-note
was joy. But he was dissatisfied with both conclusions, and knew he
had not put his finger on her. And then it came to him--pride. That
was it! It was in her eye, in the poise of her head, in the curling
tendrils of her hair, in her sensitive nostrils, in the mobile lips,
in the very pitch and angle of the rounded chin, in her hands, small,
muscular and veined, that he knew at sight to be the hard-worked hands
of one who had spent long hours at the piano. Pride it was, in every
muscle, nerve, and quiver of her--conscious, sentient, stinging pride.

She might be joyous and natural, boy and woman, fun and frolic; but
always the pride was there, vibrant, tense, intrinsic, the basic stuff
of which she was builded. She was a woman, frank, outspoken, straight-
looking, plastic, democratic; but toy she was not. At times, to him,