days--though there was also some sort of surgical congress there that
spring that served him as an excuse, and Mary, Miss Wollaston felt, had
only herself to blame for what happened.

She had elected to be tragic; preferred the Catskills with a dull old
aunt to Vienna with a gay young father. John went alone, sore from the
quarrel and rather adrift. In Vienna, he met Paula Carresford, an
American opera singer, young, extraordinarily beautiful, and of
unimpeachable respectability. They were in Vienna together the first week
in August, 1914. They got out together, sailed on the same ship for
America and in the autumn of that year, here in Chicago, in the most
decorous manner in the world, John married her.

There was a room in Miss Wollaston's well ordered mind which she had
always guarded as an old-fashioned New England village housewife used to
guard the best parlor, no light, no air, no dust, Holland covers on all
the furniture. Rigorously she forbore to speculate upon the attraction
which had drawn John and Paula together--upon what had happened between
them--upon how the thing had looked and felt to either of them. She
covered the whole episode with one blanket observation: she supposed it
was natural in the circumstances.

And there was much to be thankful for. Paula was well-bred; she was
amiable; she was "nice"; nice to an amazing degree, considering. She had
made a genuine social success. She had given John a new lease on life,
turned back the clock for him, oh--years.

Mary, Miss Wollaston felt, had taken it surprisingly well. At the wedding
she had played her difficult part admirably and during the few months she
had stayed at home after the wedding, she had not only kept on good terms