he said good night to you, he came up to me for a yarn. And he was steady as a rock. He mentioned casually of having had several sips, so I� I� never dreamed � er� that he had indisposed you.”

When Lute and Ernestine departed for Santa Barbara, Bert Wainwright and his sister remembered their long-neglected home in Sacramento. A pair of painters, proteges of Paula, arrived the same day. But they were little in evidence, spending long days in the hills with a trap and driver and smoking long pipes in the stag room.

The free and easy life of the Big House went on in its frictionless way. Dick worked. Graham worked. Paula maintained her seclusion. The sages from the madrono grove strayed in for wordy dinners — and wordy evenings, except when Paula played for them.