hat she was constantly singing sharp.

Paula herself, though disappointed, didn't feel too badly about it,
knowing that all her difficulties were merely matters of adjustment,
until she read what the critics said about her in the papers the next
morning. What they said was not on the face of it, severe;--came, indeed,
to much the same thing as Wallace Hood's verdict. But the picture between
the lines which they unanimously presented, was of a spoiled beauty,
restless for the publicity that private life deprived her of, offering in
a winning manner to a gullible public, a gold brick.

Paula was furiously angry over this, justifiably, too. Her work had
been professional even in its defects and deserved professional
judgment. The case was serious, too, for if that notion of her once got
fairly planted in the minds of her public, it would be almost
impossible to eradicate it.

But Anthony March had not been mistaken when he spoke of her as a
potential tamer of wild beasts. Her anger was no mere gush of emotions,
to spend itself and leave her exhausted. It was a sort that hardened in
an adamantine resolution. The next chance she got, she'd show them!
Unluckily, she wasn't billed to sing again until toward the end of the
week. It happened, however, that the Sunday papers, taking away with one
hand, gave in a roundabout but effective fashion with the other.

The opera billed for that night was _Pagliacci_. A young American
baritone with a phenomenal high A, was to sing "Tonio" and a new Spanish
soprano was cast for "Nedda." When this young woman saw the Sunday papers
she, too, went into a violent rage. Her knowledge of English was not
sufficient to enable her to draw any comfort from the subtle cruelties
which the critics had inflicted on Paula in the news section. But the
music and drama supplements which had been printed days before, devoted
as they were to the opening of the season, simply made Paula the whole
thing. The Spanish young lady's rage was of a different quality from
Paula's. She wept and stormed. She demanded like Herodias, the head of
that press agent on a charger. Simply that and nothing more. And when she
failed to get it, she went to bed.

The management, disconcerted but by no means at the end of its resources,
decreed a change of the bill to _Lucia_. They were ready to go on with
_Lucia_ which had been billed for Tuesday night. All they needed was to
bring the scenery out from town in a truck. This the