onsidered the opera, but gave it up after she had
kept him working over it for weeks because the soprano part wasn't big
enough. It would be just the thing for Fournier."

Jimmy raised the language difficulty. "The book's in English, I
suppose," he said.

"It's been translated into French," Mary said, and then admitted
authorship by adding, "after a fashion; as well as an amateur like me
could do it." She didn't mind a bit how much Jimmy knew. Not that he
wasn't capable of very acute surmises but that whatever he brought up he
wouldn't have the flutters over.

"Does Fournier like it himself?" he wanted to know. "Does he see the
personal possibilities in it, I mean?"

"I haven't shown it to him yet," Mary said. "I want him to hear about it
in just the right way first. If Paula would only say just the right
thing! She means to but she forgets. LaChaise would back her up, I think,
if she took the lead. Otherwise ... well, he isn't looking for trouble,
I suppose, and of course, it would mean a lot."

"Somebody has to put his back into an enterprise of that sort,"
Jimmy observed.

"I can't, directly," she said, "not with LaChaise nor with Mr. Eckstein.
But you see," she went on, "if Violet happened to hear, from somebody who
was in the way of getting inside information, about a small opera that
had a sensational part for a baritone, she'd work it and make her husband
too, and since he's one of the real backers and a friend of Mr.
Eckstein's, they'd be likely to accomplish something."

"Lead me to it," said Jimmy. "Give me your inside information and leave
Violet to me."

He got a little overflow from the fulness of her heart at that that would
have rewarded him amply for a more arduous and less amusing prospect than
he was committed to. It was always touch and go whether this summer
plunge into musical criticism wouldn't bore him frightfully. Pretentious
solemnities of any kind were hard for him to tolerate and an opera season
is, of course, stuffed with these, even a democratized blue-penciled
out-of-doors affair like this. It was a great relief to find him a mind
as free from sentimental resonances as Mary Wollaston's swimming about in
it. They saw eye to eye over a lot of things.

They were in whole-hearted agreement for example about a certain
impresario, Maxfield Ware, who created a sensation among the company and
staff by turning up ostentatiously unaccounted for from New York and
looking intensely enigmatic