are, I'll let
you in." She fished an explanatory latch-key out of her wrist-bag as she
went up the steps.

"Why," he said, "I believe this is the house where I'm expected to
tune a piano."

In the act of thrusting home her key, Paula stopped short, turned
irrepressibly and stared at him. She was one of that very small number of
American-born singers who take the English language seriously and she
knew good speech when she heard it. It was one of the qualities which had
first attracted her to Doctor John. This man's speaking voice would have
arrested her attention pleasantly anywhere. Coming from the private
soldier Lucile had told to come round to tune the piano, it really
startled her. She turned back to the door and opened it.

"Yes," she said, "they're expecting you. Come in and I'll show you
the piano."

She might, of course, merely have indicated the drawing-room door to him
with a nod and gone up-stairs, but she was determined now to wait and
hear him say something more. So she led the way into the drawing-room and
quite superfluously indicated the Circassian grand with a gesture. Then
she looked back at him quickly enough to surprise the expression that
flickered across his face at the sight of it. A mere cocking of one
eyebrow it was, but amusingly expressive. So, too, was the way he walked
over toward it, with an air of cautious determination, of readiness for
anything, that made Paula want to laugh. He dropped down sidewise on the
bench, turned up the lid and dug his fingers into the keyboard.

At the noise he evoked from that pampered instrument she did laugh aloud.
It was not a piano tuner's arpeggio but a curiously teasing mixed
dissonance she couldn't begin to identify. She thought she heard him say,
"My God!" but couldn't be sure. He repeated his chord pianissimo and held
it down, reached up and echoed it in the upper half of the keyboard; then
struck, hard, two octaves in the bass.

"What a piano!" he said. "What a damned piano!" He made a sort of effort
to pull himself up; apologized (she thought that was what he meant to
do) for the damn. But as he turned back to the piano and struck another
chord or two, she could see that his sense of outrage was mounting
steadily all the time.

"You can't tune a piano like this."--He pushed up the cover and stared
gloomily at the strings. "A mincing sickly thing like this. It's all
wrong. The scale is all wrong. The man who designed it ought to be hung.
But