ginal talent and that he believed he had operas
in him. There was one about finished that he was going to look at
to-morrow. Then he pulled up short and said it was Paula he wanted to
talk about.

"Dad caught that all right without waiting for me to translate it. What
he wanted to get at, right at the jump off, was whether Paula knew
LaChaise had come down to talk about her. Was he to consider Mr.
LaChaise her emissary? I took a chance on _emissaire_ for that and it
worked all right.

"Well, the Frenchman said, as cool as you please, that he was. Said he
wouldn't have ventured to intrude otherwise:--and dad froze to ice right
there. But LaChaise went on and spoke his piece just the same. He said
he'd come to-night to verify the enthusiastic reports he had heard of her
singing but that she had outdone them all. He said the voice itself was
unusual, of great power and of beautiful quality, adequate in range for
anything that could be expected of her. But he said that was only the
beginning of it. The important things were that she was a real musician
in the first place and a woman with real passions in the second.

"I didn't know whether to translate that to dad or to shut the Frenchman
up myself right there. I would have liked to take a punch at him. But, of
course, you're nothing but a part of the machinery when you are
interpreting, so I handed it on, without looking at dad. All he said was,
'We'll get to the point, if you please, Monsieur.'

"LaChaise understood that without waiting for me. He said he had had no
hesitation in offering Paula a contract to sing the leading dramatic
soprano roles at Ravinia this summer and that he had told her if it
worked anywhere near as well as he expected it to there was no doubt of
her getting a good Metropolitan engagement next season. He finished up by
saying he had had to ask her to make a decision as soon as possible
because he was at that moment negotiating with some one else who couldn't
be put off very long.

"Dad asked then whether Paula had given him an answer to-night. LaChaise
told him she had accepted--subject to his obtaining dad's consent. Then
he finished up with a full-dress bow. 'That is the point you have asked
me to come to, Monsieur,' he said.

"Dad never said a word for a minute. You could see it must have been
ghastly for him. I guess LaChaise must have seen it himself, for he went
on and tried to soften it down a bit. Said he didn't want to seem to
_bru