Nothing less than a downright unmistakable triumph would convince them.  She was a professional in the grain and yet in this adventure she would be under the curse of an amateur’s status, a thing she hated as all professionals do.

It was evidently from an instinct to cut herself off as completely as possible from these social connections of hers that she rented for the summer, a furnished house in the village of Ravinia, within a mile or so of the park.  John was rather disconcerted over this when she told him about it.  She greeted him with it as an accomplished fact upon his return to Chicago with Mary.  She made a genuine effort to explain the necessity, but explanations were not in Paula’s line and she didn’t altogether succeed.

She made it clear enough, though, that she didn’t want to be fussed by the attentions of friends or family, of her husband least of all.  She didn’t want to be congratulated nor encouraged.  She didn’t want to be asked to little suppers or luncheons nor to be made the objective of personally conducted tourist parties back stage.  She didn’t want to be called to the telephone, ever, except on matters of professional business by her Ravinia colleagues.

All of this, John pointed out, could be accomplished at home.  He, himself, could deal with the telephoners and the tourists.  This was about all apparently that he was going to be good for this summer; but a watchdog’s duties he could perform in a highly efficient manner.

“But a home and a husband are the very first things I’ve got to forget about,” cried Paula.  “Oh, can’t you see!”

Darkly and imperfectly, he did.  The atmosphere of the home in which one has been guarded and pampered as a priceless possession was—­must be—­enervating, and to one who was screwing up her powers to their highest pitch for a great effort like this, it would be poisonous—­malarial!  He would have been clearer about it, though, but for the misgiving that, consciously or not, Paula was punishing him for having insisted that she carry her contract through.  Or—­if that were too harsh a way of putting it,—­that she was coquetting with him.  Having told her down there in the South that he didn’t care for her in a loverlike way, he might now have an opportunity of proving that he did—­over obstacles!

It gave him a twinge, for a fact, but he managed to ask good-humoredly if this meant that he was to be barred from the whole show, from performances as well as from rehearsals and the Ravinia house.

“I won’t care,” she said with a laugh of desperation, “after I’ve once got my teeth in.  But until then...  Oh, I know it sounds horrible but I don’t want even to—­feel you; not even in the fringe of it.

“I’ll tell you who I would like, though,” she went on over a palpable hesitation and with a flush of color rising to her cheeks.  “I can’t live all alone up there of course.  I could get along with just a maid, but it would be easier and nicer if I could have some one for a—­companion.  And the person I’d choose, if she’d do it, is Mary.”