With a little start, she became aware that some one had asked her a question. For the remainder of the dinner she kept her eyes at her end of the table, and exerted herself to be gracious to her taciturn companion. Paul’s bad temper was not unbecoming, and he scarcely could have adopted a wiser course. Marcia had expected to find him sparkling, enthusiastic, convincing; and she had come down prepared to withstand his charm. _Mais voilà!_ there was no charm to withstand. He was sullen, moody, with a frown scarcely veiled enough for politeness. Some one had once compared him, not very originally, to a Greek god. He looked it more than ever to-night, if one can imagine a Greek god in the sulks. What was the matter with him, Marcia could only guess. Perhaps, as his cousin had affirmed, he was like a cat and needed stroking the right way of the fur. At any rate, she found the new mood rather taking, and she somewhat weakly allowed herself to stroke him the right way. By the time they rose from the table he was, if not exactly purring, at least not showing his claws. At the Royston girls’ suggestion, they put on evening wraps and repaired to the terrace—except the two elder ladies, who preferred the more tempered atmosphere of the salon. Mrs. Copley delegated her husband and Sybert to act as chaperons—a position which Sybert accepted with a bow, to the accompaniment of a slightly puzzled smile on Eleanor’s part. She could not exactly make out the gentleman’s footing in the household. They seated themselves in a group about the balustrade, with the exception of Eleanor and Sybert, who strolled back and forth the length of the flagging. Eleanor was doing her best to-night, and her best was very good; she appeared to have wakened a spark in even his indifference. Marcia, with her eyes on the two, thought again how well they went together, and M. Benoit was a second time on the verge of calling her _distraite_. The two strollers after a time joined the group, Eleanor humming under her breath a little French _chanson_ that had been going the rounds of the Paris cafés that spring. ‘Oh, sing something we all know,’ said Margaret, and with a laughing curtesy toward Sybert she struck into ‘Fair Harvard.’ The other girls joined her. Their voices, rising high and clear, filled the night with the swinging melody. It seemed strangely out of place there, in the midst of the Sabine hills, with the old villa behind them and the Roman Campagna at their feet. As their voices died away Sybert laughed softly. ‘I swear I’d forgotten it!’ Margaret shook her head in mock reproof. ‘Forgotten it!’ she cried. ‘A man ought to be ashamed to acknowledge it if he had forgotten his Alma Mater song. It’s like forgetting his country.’ ‘I suspect,’ said Eleanor, ‘that it’s time for you to go back to America and be naturalized, Mr. Sybert.’ ‘Oh, well, Miss Royston,’ he objected, ‘I suppose in time one outgrows his college, just as one outgrows his kindergarten.’