This failure of his fully to understand the person traditionally the nearest and dearest to him in all the world had, upon Mary’s mind, the effect of, somehow, solidifying him; making him more completely human to her—­where it might have been expected to work the other way.  It proved the last touch she needed to quicken the concern she had from the beginning felt for him into an entirely real thing, a motivating principle.  If it was possible to get that opera of his produced, she was going to do it.

She stopped at the Dearborn Avenue house on her way down-town to get her little portable typewriter and carry it out to Ravinia with her.  In the odd hours of the next few days she copied March’s libretto in English, triple spaced, out of his score and this, with a lead pencil, she took to carrying around with her to Paula’s rehearsals, to her dressing-room, everywhere.  A phrase at a time, syllable by syllable, she began putting it into French.

On the last Saturday night in June the Ravinia season opened with Tosca sung in Italian; Paula singing the title part and Fournier as “Scarpia.”  A veteran American tenor, Wilbur Hastings, an old Ravinia favorite, sang “Cavaradossi.”  Taken as a whole, the performance was quite as good as any one has a right to expect any opening night to be.  The big audience which went away good-naturedly satisfied, had had its moments of really stirring enthusiasm.  Fournier scored a well deserved triumph with a “Scarpia” that was characterized by a touch of really sinister distinction.  Hastings, incapable as he was of subtleties or refinements, did as usual all the obvious things pretty well and got the welcome he had so rightly counted upon.  But Paula fell unmistakably short of winning the smashing success she had so ardently hoped for.

She did not, of course, fail.  Wallace Hood, to take him for a sample of her admiring friends, went home assuring himself that her success had been all he or any of the rest of them could have wished.  And he wrote that same night a letter to John Wollaston out at Hickory Hill saying as much.  Her beauty, he told John, had been a revelation even to him and there could be no doubt that the audience had been deeply moved by it.  Her acting also had taken him by surprise.  It was a talent he had not looked for in her and he was correspondingly delighted by this manifestation of it.  In the great scene with Fournier when he stated the terms of his abominable bargain to her, Wallace had hardly been able to realize it was Paula that he saw on the stage.

When it came to her singing (he knew John would want his most impartial honest judgment)—­here where he had been surest of her, she came nearest to disappointing him.  It was a shame, of course, to subject a lovely voice like hers to singing in the great vacancy of all outdoors, to say nothing of forcing it into competition with a shouter and bellower like Hastings.  But he felt sure when she was a little better accustomed to her surroundings, she would rise superior even to these drawbacks.