lse could presume to decide. How much
more had he said to that sensitive nerve-drawn child of his? He
remembered how white she had gone for a moment, a little later. And he
had pretended not to see! Just as he had been pretending, a few minutes
back, to doubt the reality of the peril March had saved her from. What a
liar he was!

Sentimentality, March had quoted Mary as saying, was the cruelest thing
in the world. John stood convicted now of that cruelty toward his
daughter. Was he guilty of it, also, toward his wife? Did their quarrel
boil down to that?

CHAPTER XXVII

SETTLING PAULA

Anthony March might deny as much as he pleased that he was "enough of an
Olympian to laugh" at life's ironies, but it remained true that his God
had a sense of humor and that March himself appreciated it. When, well
within that same twenty-four hours, a third member of the Wollaston
family insisted upon telling him her troubles and asking him what she'd
best do about them, he conceded with the flicker of an inward grin (not
at all at the troubles which were serious enough nor at their sufferer
who was in despair), that the great Disposer, having set out to demolish
that philosophy, enjoyed making a thorough job of it.

It was about four o'clock on Sunday afternoon that he came to Paula's
cottage at Ravinia to get the score to _The Outcry_. The maid who opened
the door informed him that her mistress wasn't at home, but when he told
her what he wanted, and she had gone rather dubiously up-stairs to see
about it, it was Paula herself who, after a wait of ten minutes or so,
came down with the manuscript in her hand.

He was, perhaps, just the one person in the world she'd have come down to
see. All the explanation she volunteered to herself was that he didn't
matter. It didn't matter, this was to say, if he did perceive that she
had been crying for days and days and looked an utter wreck.

And then his errand brought her a touch of comfort. The acceptance of
_The Outcry_ for production restored the proprietary feeling she once
had had about it. She was the discoverer of _The Outcry_ and if you'd
asked her who was responsible for the revival of interest in it and for
the fact that it was now to be produced, I think she'd have told you
quite honestly that she was. Hadn't she asked them all to come to her
house to hear it? And sung the part of "Dolores" herself at that very
informal audition?

And I'll hazard one further guess.