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 it, and of the malicious pleasure she took in it. What was the inner irritation with everything that kept her so aware of other people's weak points and so easily led into playing ill-naturedly on them. Now, here and now, let her resolve she would never tease Eugenia again.

But she knew she would.

She did, however, resist an easy opening, given her by the next remark of Eugenia's, as she looked across the beautiful room, "What makes it all so just right? I'm going to start in at that corner, and look at every single thing, and find out what makes it right."

Marise restrained the mocking words on the tip of her tongue, and turned away to the half-open window, near which she stood. Across the empty street in the pale gold of the spring sunshine, the vaporous young green of the Luxembourg showed like a mist through the tall iron palings. The light blue sky above was veiled with hazy white clouds, stirred by a young little spring breeze, which blew languorously on the girl's cheek.

It came over her, all of it, with a soft rush, the invitation to life, the lovely, treacherous, ever-renewed invitation to live. And she drew back from it, with her ever-renewed determination not to be taken in by it. It was always too horribly lovely in May. It made her ache, it made her want to cry, it made her horribly unhappy. How detestable to have it so lovely, looking so seductive as though this were only the promise of something lovelier … when there wasn't anything to redeem the promise, when it was all just a part of the general scheme to fool you.

Behind her Eugenia's voice said enviously, "Where did she get all these terribly quaint Louis XVI things?"

How thoroughly Eugenia's English diction teacher had rooted out that "turribly" of Eugenia's, thought Marise.

Aloud she answered, "She began collecting years ago, before anybody else thought of it."

"I shouldn't think a teacher would have much money to collect."

"Oh, she picked them up for nothing, in corners of