John’s sudden unwelcome surmise must have been legible in his face because March then said earnestly and quite as if the doctor had spoken his thought aloud, “Oh, it isn’t that.  I mean, I haven’t done anything disgraceful.  It’s only that I know too many musicians as it is—­professional pianists and such.  If they find out I’m back, they’ll simply make a slave of me.  I don’t need to earn much money and I like to live my own way, but it’s hard to deny people what they are determined to get.”  He added thoughtfully, “I dare say you understand that, sir.”

John Wollaston nodded.  He understood very well indeed.  He checked on his tongue the words, “Only I have to earn a lot of money.”  “You are a composer, too, my wife tells me.”

“Yes,” March said, “but that isn’t the point exactly.  Put it that I enjoy traveling light and that I don’t like harness.  Though this one,”—­he glanced down at his uniform,—­“hasn’t been so bad.”  He turned toward the piano with the evident idea of going back to work.

“Well,” John said, “I must be off.  You’ve a good philosophy of life if you can make it work.  Not many men can.  Good-by.  We’ll meet again some time, I hope.”

“I hope so too,” said Anthony March.

John went out and closed the drawing-room door behind him.  Then he left the house without going up-stairs and saying hello to Paula and sitting down on the edge of her bed, as he had meant to do, and telling her all about his talk with the piano tuner.

It really was late and he must be getting started.  Only why had he closed the drawing-room door so carefully behind him?  So that his wife shouldn’t be disturbed by the infernal racket those fellows always made tuning pianos?  Or so that she mightn’t even know, until he had finished his work and gone, that Anthony March had come back at all?  And not knowing, should not come down en negligee and ask whether he had brought his songs for her.  Had he brought them?  Certainly John had given him a good enough chance to say so.  And if he had brought them and Paula did not come, would he leave them for her with Nat?  Or would he carry them away in his little black satchel?

All the way out to the hospital John kept turning Anthony March over in his mind and the last thing to leave it was what had been the first impression of all.  The fine strength of that hand and wrist which tuned grand pianos with a T wrench.

He hated himself for having shut the door.

And as it happened this act did not prevent Paula from finding March.  The tyrant who looked after her hair had given her an appointment that morning at ten.  So, a little before that hour and just as March was finishing off his job, she came down, dressed for the street.  She came into the drawing-room and with good-humored derision, smiled at him.

“I knew you’d come and do it,” she told him.

“It isn’t going to be so bad,” he answered.  “Moszkowski, Chaminade,—­quite a little of Chopin for that matter,—­will go pretty well on it.”