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 "Oh, it's easy," Paul deprecated. "I know dozens of things harder than that."

"I like it," Mark insisted. "Play it—go on."

"It's rather monotonous—too much repeating."

He closed the door behind him with an elation he wouldn't have betrayed to Mark for worlds, and proceeded to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. Aunt Verona was mending stockings.

"Aunt Verona, Mark Laval says I own a ship and a shipyard. I don't, do I?"

She waited a moment, then replied:

"Don't let people put notions into your head. Here are some cookies before you practise."

Paul blushed. He was thinking of the notions Walter had put into his head.

At the open window of the playroom he tossed a cookie out to his friend, who was pulling at the grass. "You're wrong, Mark," he whispered, "about the ships and things. I asked my aunt."

Mark merely shook his head in indulgent contradiction, accommodating the cookie in two bites.

"Play the Impromptu," he returned.

The opening of the crate of books had consequences more far-reaching than Paul could have foreseen. From the day when Aunt Verona had consigned the souvenir volumes to the fire, the disconcerting blank moods had gained a new ascendancy. With increasing frequency and at the most unexpected moments she repaired to the playroom to stare unseeingly through the window. She confused the days, too, and spoke German oftener than French. Occasionally she disappeared upstairs and Paul, listening breathlessly, could hear the faint rumbling of drawers, the shutting down of boxes, the crunching of