It really was late and he must be getting started. Only why had he closed
the drawing-room door so carefully behind him? So that his wife shouldn't
be disturbed by the infernal racket those fellows always made tuning
pianos? Or so that she mightn't even know, until he had finished his work
and gone, that Anthony March had come back at all? And not knowing,
should not come down _en negligee_ and ask whether he had brought his
songs for her. Had he brought them? Certainly John had given him a good
enough chance to say so. And if he had brought them and Paula did not
come, would he leave them for her with Nat? Or would he carry them away
in his little black satchel?

All the way out to the hospital John kept turning Anthony March over in
his mind and the last thing to leave it was what had been the first
impression of all. The fine strength of that hand and wrist which tuned
grand pianos with a T wrench.

He hated himself for having shut the door.

And as it happened this act did not prevent Paula from finding March. The
tyrant who looked after her hair had given her an appointment that
morning at ten. So, a little before that hour and just as March was
finishing off his job, she came down, dressed for the street. She came
into the drawing-room and with good-humored derision, smiled at him.

"I knew you'd come and do it," she told him.

"It isn't going to be so bad," he answered. "Moszkowski,
Chaminade,--quite a little of Chopin for that matter,--will go pretty
well on it."

"Did you bring my songs?" she asked.

From the chair that he had thrown his blouse upon, he produced a flat
package neatly wrapped in brown paper. And as she went over to the window
with it, tearing the wrappers away as she walked, he went back to his
work at the piano.

"Don't do that," she said, as he struck a chord or two. "I can't read if
you do." But almost instantly she added with a laugh, "Oh, all right, go
ahead. I can't read this anyway. Why, it's frightful!" She came swiftly
toward the piano and stood the big flat quires of score paper on the
rack. "Show me how this goes," she commanded, but he pushed back a little
with a gesture almost of fright.

"No," he protested sharply. "I can't. I can't begin to play that stuff."

She remained standing beside his shoulder, looking at the score.

"They're strange words," she said, and began reading them to herself,
half aloud, haltingly.

"'Low hangs the moon. It rose late,
It is laggi