"My grandmother would be shocked," she said.

"Don't you smoke at home?"

"She doesn't know I smoke at all."

"A little bit won't hurt."

"I don't much."

"I overdo it," Lili said looking at the cigarette in her fingers. "It's all right if you don't overdo it. I think anything's all right if you don't overdo it," she added suddenly and she looked at Merritt, smiling. "Like those two over there. They've been talking nothing but politics since they got up this morning." And Merritt looked at them, at Johanna with her dark head in her father's lap and she felt envy and pride and she wanted to tell him that Johanna's hair was no longer his alone to stroke.

"Couldn't we discuss the archeological wonders of the world or Lana Turner's impending divorce," Lili said. Johann Seiber looked up at his wife.

"Good heavens. Who's getting a divorce?"

"Lana Turner."

"I don't know her," he said.

"Too bad," said Johanna. "Too bad." She laughed at the confusion in her father's face.

"Of course, she's probably not as nice as I am," Lili went on, "but she'll be a free woman soon."

"What are you talking about?"

"She's teasing you, Father. Lana Turner's in the movies."

"Of course," he said, knowing no more than he did before. "Ridiculous," he added emphatically. "To think that you would be an accessory after the fact. My own flesh and blood." And he pushed Johanna away, smiling at her. "You and Merritt better go and find something else useless to do. I have work to get ready for Monday. We can't all be merry vacationers, alas."

Merritt sat in the stern, her ankles crossed under the little wicker seat. She pushed the canoe through the narrow, willow-fringed channel between the two lakes smoothly and deftly, watching the paddle as the water streamed down its blade-like edge, watched it cut the water and turn flat against it as her wrists turned. And in the dusk the little owls stirred in the willow fringe and blinked hollowly at them as they passed.

Johanna watched them and loved them for the indifference in their blinking and then she smiled at Merritt, think of Merritt's indifference; of how unaware she was of the people around them who turned to look at them as they walked together, their hands clasped between them; who stared at them as they were now in the canoe, like lovers. She felt the disdain in Merritt, the conscious aloofness, but she knew that it stemmed from an ingenuous purity Merritt could not reconcile with the human frailty that had shaped it. Johanna stood guard over her vulnerability.

"You're so quiet," she said.

"I was just thinking."

"About what?"

"About your mother. She's very charming."

"Do you like her?"

"Yes, but I'm glad she's not really your mother."

"Oh."

"If she were, I couldn't feel about her as I do." She paused for a moment, watching the water, thinking of what Lili Seiber had said. "Johanna, have you ever wanted to tell her?"

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