When Mary Morrison’s tapering fingers touched the keys they brought forth a liquid and caressing sound like falling water in a fountain, and when she leaned over them as if to solicit them to yield their kind responses, her attitude, her subtle garments, the swift interrogative turns of her head, brought visions to those who watched and listened.  Kate dreamed of Italian gardens—­the gardens she never had seen; Von Shierbrand thought of dark German forests; Honora, of a moonlit glade.  These three confessed so much.  The others did not tell their visions, but obviously they had them.  Blue-eyed Mary was one of those women who inspire others.  She was the quintessence of femininity, and she distilled upon the air something delicately intoxicating, like the odor of lotus-blossoms.

It was significant that the Fulhams’ was no longer a house of suburban habits.  Ten o’clock and lights out had ceased to be the rule.  After music there frequently was a little supper, and every one was pressed into service in the preparation of it.  Something a trifle fagged and hectic began to show in the faces of Mrs. Dennison’s family, and that good woman ventured to offer some reproof.

“You all are hard workers,” she said, “and you ought to be hard resters, too.  You’re not acting sensibly.  Any one would think you were the idle rich.”

“Well, we’re entitled to all the pleasure we can get,” Mary Morrison had retorted.  “There are people who think that pleasure isn’t for them.  But I am just the other way—­I take it for granted that pleasure is my right.  I always take everything in the way of happiness that I can get my hands on.”

“You mean, of course, my dear child,” said the gentle Mrs. Goodrich, “all that you can get which does not belong to some one else.”

Blue-eyed Mary laughed throatily.

“Fortunately,” she said, “there’s pleasure enough to go around.  It’s like air, every one can breathe it in.”

VII

But though Miss Morrison had made herself so brightly, so almost universally at home, there was one place into which she did not venture to intrude.  This was Kate’s room.  Mary had felt from the first a lack of encouragement there, and although she liked to talk to Kate, and received answers in which there appeared to be no lack of zest and response, yet it seemed to be agreed that when Miss Barrington came tramping home from her hard day’s work, she was to enjoy the solitude of her chamber.

Mary used to wonder what went on there.  Miss Barrington could be very still.  The hours would pass and not a sound would issue from that high upper room which looked across the Midway and included the satisfactory sight of the Harper Memorial and the massed University buildings.  Kate would, indeed, have had difficulty in explaining that she was engaged in the mere operation of living.  Her life, though lonely, and to an extent undirected, seemed abundant.