"Quite a remarkable thing, that, to remember so far back," I smiled, whereupon she made a little grimace. "How do you mean--by the days?" "I was taught a tomorrow, not alone because I could recognize today but because I remembered yesterday, and was shown how these were the past, present, and future tenses of our lives; that the present participle is Living, and the infinitive is----" "To love?" I suggested. "To live," she said evenly, and I bit my tongue. "He made me study awfully hard, but I rather liked it as there wasn't much else to do except play with Echochee, and she became tiresome occasionally. Later he started me at the piano, and the violin, and I loved to work after that. For he's quite a remarkable musician, really! I suppose our library must have a thousand books, and I've read nearly all of them--besides stacks of the modern ones we always brought from our semi-annual cruises 'to the world'--as he used to call those trips. Don't you simply adore Blasco?" "I suppose you mean Ibanez," I said, rather pleased at being able to air this familiarity with literary personages. "Ibanez, then," she casually agreed, "if you prefer calling him by his mother's name."--And, not knowing upon what hazy path this would lead me, I laughingly admitted: "Well, I've only tackled one of his things, and haven't even finished that yet." Adding, with perhaps a slightly malicious desire to bring her superior knowledge to bay: "You read him in the original, I suppose?" "Not freely enough to be quite relaxing. But on our cruise last summer we got a very good translation in French--really, much better than the English, I think." Again I laughed, as a light entered my muddled outlook because of this astonishing information that accounted for much I had not been able to reconcile with her isolated life. From the moment she had mimicked the cook I had been kept in a state of wonderment. I had felt her superiority; I had marveled at the cultivation that clung about her as a royal robe. Now it was explained. Music, literature, languages! "That night you protested about the bomb," I asked, "did you hear me call?" Could it have been that some of the animation left her face as she answered slowly: "Oh, was it you? I heard someone call to a person named Sylvia." "But--isn't that your name?" "Oh," she laughed, "I haven't nearly so pretty a name as that!" I was crazy to be the judge, but asked, instead: "Did your--father ever explain why he was afraid of detectives?"