But when the respite was over and she lay back in the dark again, she made no effort to deny admission to the thoughts that came crowding so thickly.  She must think; she must, before the ordeal of the next breakfast table, have taken thought.  She must have decided if not what she should do, at least what she could hope for.  She was much clearer and saner for the little interlude with Rush.

Suppose in the first place;—­suppose that Paula’s rebellion was serious.  Suppose the Tower of Brass violated and the Princess carried away by the jinn or upon the magic carpet—­whichever it was—­to a world where none of them could follow her.  Suppose John Wollaston bereft again.  Would not Mary’s old place be hers once more?  Would not everything be just as it had been during those two years before her father went to Vienna?

But some instinct in her revolted utterly at that.  It was an instinct that she could not completely reason out.  But she knew that if such a calamity befell, her old place would not exist or would be intolerable if it did.

Suppose again:—­suppose that Paula’s rebellion could be somehow frustrated.  Would it be possible to save Paula for her father by saving March from Paula?  In plain words, by diverting him from Paula to herself.

That was a disgustingly vulgar way of putting it.  But wasn’t it what she meant?  And if she couldn’t be honest with her own thoughts....  Well then, were her powers of attraction great enough, even if they were consciously exerted to the utmost, to outpull Paula’s with a musician, with a man whose songs she could sing as she had sung to-night?

That moment in Annie’s old bedroom off the nursery supplied concretely enough the answer to her question.  They had been soul to soul in there, they two.  There was no language to describe the intimacy of it, except perhaps the hackneyed phrases of the wedding service which had lost all their meaning.  And while they had stood together in the half dark, Paula had opened the door, bringing the light in with her.  She had taken him confidently in her strong hands and kissed him and led him away without one hesitating backward thought.

And the truth seemed clear enough, incandescent, now she looked back at it, that it was Paula who had possessed him all along.  That moment which she had called her own had been Paula’s.  Mary had got it because she had happened to come in and sit down beside him.  She had, as it were, picked his pocket.  She stood convicted the moment the rightful owner appeared.  That was how much her chance of “saving” March from Paula amounted to.

What a hypocrite she had been to use that phrase even in her thoughts.  Save him from Paula, indeed!  Paula could give him, even if she gave only the half loaf, all he needed.  She could inspire his genius, float it along on the broad current of her own energy.  Compared to that, what could Mary give?  What would it, her one possible gift, amount to?