The impression made on Sylvia had not in the least corresponded to this one; but with a cat-like twist of her flexible mind, she fell on her feet, took up his lead, and deftly produced the only suitable material she had at command.  “They seem to talk well, about such interesting things, and yet I can never remember anything they say.  It’s odd,” she sat down near the fireplace with a great air of pondering the strange phenomenon.

“No, it isn’t odd,” he explained, dropping into the chair opposite her and stretching out his long legs to the blaze.  “It’s only people who do something, who have anything to say.  These folks don’t do anything except get up and sit down the right way, and run their voices up and down the scale so that their great-aunts would faint away to hear them!  They haven’t any energy left over.  If some one would only write out suitable parts for them to memorize, the performance would be perfect!” He threw back his head and laughed aloud, the sound ringing through the room.  Sylvia had seldom seen him so light-heartedly amused.  He explained:  “I haven’t seen this sort of solemn, genteel posturing for several years now, and I find it too delicious!  To see the sweet, invincible American naivete welling up in their intense satisfaction in being so sophisticated,—­oh, the harmless dears!” He cried out upon them gaily, with the indulgence of an adult who looks on at children’s play.

Sylvia was a trifle breathless, seeing him disappear so rapidly down this unexpected path, but she was for the moment spared the effort to overtake him by the arrival of Tojiko with a tray of fresh mail.  “Oh, letters from home!” Sylvia rejoiced, taking a bulky one and a thin one from the pile.  “The fat one is from Father,” she said, holding it up.  “He is like me, terribly given to loquaciousness.  We always write each other reams when we’re apart.  The little flat one is from Judith.  She never can think of anything to say except that she is still alive and hopes I am, and that her esteem for me is undiminished.  Dear Spartan Judy!”

“Do you know,” said the man opposite her, “if I hadn’t met you, I should have been tempted to believe that the institution of the family had disappeared.  I never saw anything like you Marshalls!  You positively seem to have a real regard for each other in spite of what Bernard Shaw says about the relations of blood-kin.  You even, incredible as it seems, appear to feel a mutual respect!”

“That’s a very pretty compliment indeed,” said Sylvia, smiling at him flashingly, “and I’m going to reward you by reading some of Judith’s letter aloud.  Letters do paint personalities so, don’t they?”

He settled himself to listen.

“Oh, it won’t take long!” she reassured him laughingly.  She read: 

“’DEAR SYLVIE:  Your last letter about the palaces at Versailles was very interesting.  Mother looked you up on the plan of the grounds in Father’s old Baedeker.  I’m glad to know you like Paris so much.  Our chief operating surgeon says he thinks the opportunities at the School of Medicine in Paris are fully as good as in Vienna, and chances for individual diagnoses greater.  Have you visited that yet?’” Over the letter Sylvia raised a humorous eyebrow at Page, who smiled, appreciative of the point.