“You’re the one who’s being emotional about it,” she said.

The blood leaped into his face at that but he did not reply.

“Look here, John,” she went on—­and her big voice swept away the polite convention that the others were not listening, “I’ve told you that this won’t work and you must see now that that’s true.  There’s still time to call up March and tell him that it’s to-morrow instead of to-day.  Because of Rush and Mary.  Won’t you let me do that?”

It is just possible that if he had been alone with her, he might have acknowledged the issue, might have admitted that this new composer whose works she had been so absorbed in, frightened him, figured in his mind as the present manifestation of a force that was trying to take her away from him.  And having let her see that, he could safely enough have said, “Have your own way about it.  You know what will work and what won’t.  Only make it as easy for me as you can.”  But in the presence of his children—­it was they, rather than Wallace, that he minded—­he was at once evasive and domineering.

“I thought we’d already disposed of that suggestion,” he said.  “If the situation is as it has been made to appear to me there is not the smallest reason why March should be put off; why Mary and Rush and the friends we have asked in to meet them, shouldn’t be permitted to hear his songs; or why I shouldn’t myself.  I think we’ll consider that settled.”

Paula rose all in one piece.  “Very well,” she said—­to the audience, “it is settled.  Also it’s settled that I shall not come down to dinner.  As for what people will think, I’ll leave that to you.  You can make any explanation you like.  But I shall sing those songs to March—­and for him—­for all they’re worth.  I don’t care who else is there or whether they like it or not.—­A lot of patronizing amateurs!  Bring them up to the music room about nine o’clock, if you like.  I’ll be there.”

She left behind her, in that Victorian drawing-room, a silence that tingled.

CHAPTER VI

STRINGENDO

A crisis of this sort was just what the Wollastons needed to tune them up.  The four of them, for Lucile had to be counted in, met the enemy—­which is to say their arriving guests—­with an unbroken front.  They explained Paula’s non-appearance with good-humored unconcern.  She was afraid if she sat down to Lucile’s dinner that she would forget her duty and eat it and find herself fatally incapacitated for cutting loose on Mr. March’s songs afterward.  They must be rather remarkable songs that required to be approached in so Spartan a manner.  Well, Paula assured us that they were.  The family declined all responsibility in the matter, not having themselves heard a note of them, but if you wanted to you might ask Mr. Novelli, over there.  He’d been working over them with Paula for days.  As for the composer, he was as much a mystery as his songs.  He wasn’t coming to the dinner but was expected to appear from somewhere afterward.