n
answering pulse-beat, sat looking at her thoughtfully, tenderly. The
reflection that occupied his mind was with what extravagant joy he would
have received such an assurance only a few weeks ago. On any one of those
last days before his illness fastened upon him;--the Sunday he had gone
to Hickory Hill alone because Paula had found she must work with March
that day; the evening when he had made his last struggle against the
approaching delirium of fever in order to telephone for an ambulance to
get him out of that hated house. What a curious compound of nerve ends
and gland activities a man's dreams--that he lived by, or died for--were!

She pulled him out of his reverie by a deliberate movement of resolution,
taking her hands away from her face, half rising and turning her chair so
that she faced him squarely.

"I want to know in so many words," she said, "why you're glad that I'm
still bound to that Ravinia thing. You seem to want me to sing there
this summer, as much as you hated the idea of my doing it before. Well,
why? Or is it something you can't tell me? And if I sing and make a
success, shall you want me to go on with it, following up whatever
opening it offers; just as if--just as if you didn't count any more in my
life at all?"

Before he could answer she added rather dryly, "Doctor Darby would kill
me for talking to you like this. You needn't answer if it's going to
hurt you."

"No," he said, "it isn't hurting me a bit. But I'll answer one question
at a time, I think. The first thing that occurred to me when you spoke of
the Ravinia matter was that I didn't want you to break your word. You had
told them that they could count on you and I didn't want you, on my
account, to be put in a position where any one could accuse you of having
failed him. My own word was involved, for that matter. I told LaChaise I
wouldn't put any obstacles, in your way. Of course, I didn't contract
lobar pneumonia on purpose," he added with a smile.

The intensity of her gaze did not relax at this, however. She was waiting
breathlessly.

"The other question isn't quite so easy to answer," he went on, "but I
think I would wish you to--follow the path of your career wherever it
leads. I shall always count for as much as I can in your life, but
not--if I can help it--as an obstacle."

"Why?" she asked. "What has made the perfectly enormous difference?"

It was not at all an unanswerable question; nor one, indeed, that he
shr