“I don’t know what more I can do,” she said.  “I’ve offered to give up everything.”

“Yes,” he said with a grunt, “that’s it.  I don’t wonder he flew at you. That’s the thing you’ll have to give up!”

He rose and stood over her and thumped home, his point with one fist in the palm of the other hand.  “Why, you’ve got to give up the nobility,” he said.  “The self-sacrificial attitude.  You’ve got to chuck the heroine’s role altogether, Paula.  That’s what you’ve been playing, naturally enough.  It makes good drama for you, but look where it leaves him!  First you give up your career for him, and then you give him up for the career you’ve undertaken for his sake.  You’ve contrived to put him in the wrong both ways.  Oh, not meaning to, I know; just by instinct.  Well, give that up.  Give up the renunciatory gesture.  Go to him and tell him the truth.  That you want, in a perfectly human selfish way, all you can get, both of him and of a career.  They aren’t mutually exclusive really.  It ought to be possible to have quite a lot of each.”

“You think you know such a lot,” she protested rebelliously, “but there’s only one thing I want, just the same, and that’s John, himself.”

“No doubt that’s true this afternoon,” he admitted.  “You sang Thais last night and several thousand people, according to this morning’s paper, cheered you at the end of the second act.  But I believe I can tell you your day-dream.  It’s to be the greatest dramatic soprano in the world—­home for a vacation.  With John and perhaps one or two small children of the affectionate age around you.”

Her face flamed at that.  “John has been talking about me this morning!” she cried.

He shook his head.  “It was only a chance shot,” he told her.  “I’m sorry if it came close enough home to hurt.  But there couldn’t be a better day-dream than that and there’s no reason I can see why it shouldn’t come reasonably true, if you’ll honestly try for as much of it as you can get.  That’s the prescription, anyhow.  Give up nobility and all the heroic poses that go with it and practise a little enlightened selfishness instead.  Perhaps by force of example you may persuade John Wollaston to abandon about half of his conscience.  Then you would be settled.”

With that he went back to his score and by no protest or expostulation could she provoke another word out of him.  She fidgeted about the room for a quarter of an hour or so.  Then with the announcement that she was going to dress, left it and went up-stairs.

When she came down a while later in street things and a hat she presented him with a new perplexity.

“I’ve been trying everywhere I can think of to get a car,” she said, “and there simply isn’t one to be had.  I even tried to borrow one.”

He asked her what she wanted of a car.  Where she wanted to go.

“Oh, can’t you see!” she cried, “I don’t want to send for John again to come to me.  I want to go to him.  It’s too maddening!”