er. The plea for comprehension, for an ear that would
not turn away from her plain story, never was made. In a smother of words
he halted her. Affectionately, with a gentleness that achieved absolute
finality. She was overwrought. She carried paradox too far. In her
innocence she used a form of speech that she didn't know the meaning of,
and should be careful to avoid. Her troubles, with patience, would work
themselves out in the end. Meanwhile let her as far as possible stop
thinking about them.

But she had got, during the intaken breath before he began to speak, a
sensation,--as sharp and momentary as the landscape revealed in a
lightning flash,--of a sudden terror on his part; as of one finding
himself on the edge of an abyss of understanding. For that one glaring
instant before he had had time to turn his face away he had known what
she meant. But he never would look again. Never would know.

CHAPTER XVI

FULL MEASURE

Ravinia is one of Chicago's idiosyncrasies, a ten-weeks' summer season of
grand opera with a full symphony orchestra given practically
out-of-doors. Its open pavilion seats from fifteen hundred to two
thousand people and on a warm Saturday night, you will find twice as many
more on the, "bleachers" that surround it or strolling about under the
trees in the park. The railroad runs special trains to it all through the
season from town, and crammed and groaning interurbans collect their toll
for miles from up and down the shore.

It had begun as an amusement park with merry-go-rounds, Ferris-wheels and
such--to the scandalized indignation of numerous super-urban persons
whose summer places occupied most of the district roundabout. They took
the enterprise into their own hands, abolished the calliope, put a
symphony orchestra into the bandstand and, eventually, transformed the
shell into a stage and went in for opera; opera popularized with a blue
pencil so that no performance was ever more than two hours long, and at
the modest price of fifty cents.

Its forces, recruited chiefly from among the younger stars at the
Metropolitan, give performances that want no apologetic allowance from
anybody. It has become an institution of which the town and especially
the North Shore is boastful.

Paula foresaw no easy conquest here. Her social prestige, part of which
she enjoyed as John Wollaston's wife and part of which she had earned
during the last four years for herself, counted as much against h