alien to their lips. By such tokens Evan Graham was not slow in
learning that Dick Forrest's wife had a way with her, compounded of
sheerest democracy and equally sheer royalty.

It was the same thing, after dinner, in the big living room. She dared
as she pleased, but nobody assumed. Before the company settled down,
Paula seemed everywhere, bubbling over with more outrageous spirits
than any of them. From this group or that, from one corner or another,
her laugh rang out. And her laugh fascinated Graham. There was a
fibrous thrill in it, most sweet to the ear, that differentiated it
from any laugh he had ever heard. It caused Graham to lose the thread
of young Mr. Wombold's contention that what California needed was not
a Japanese exclusion law but at least two hundred thousand Japanese
coolies to do the farm labor of California and knock in the head the
threatened eight-hour day for agricultural laborers. Young Mr.
Wombold, Graham gleaned, was an hereditary large land-owner in the
vicinity of Wickenberg who prided himself on not yielding to the trend
of the times by becoming an absentee landlord.

From the piano, where Eddie Mason was the center of a group of girls,
came much noise of ragtime music and slangtime song. Terrence McFane
and Aaron Hancock fell into a heated argument over the music of
futurism. And Graham was saved from the Japanese situation with Mr.
Wombold by Dar Hyal, who proceeded to proclaim Asia for the Asiatics
and California for the Californians.

Paula, catching up her skirts for speed, fled down the room in some
romp, pursued by Dick, who captured her as she strove to dodge around
the Wombold group.