She left behind her, in that Victorian drawing-room, a silence
that tingled.




CHAPTER VI

STRINGENDO


A crisis of this sort was just what the Wollastons needed to tune them
up. The four of them, for Lucile had to be counted in, met the
enemy--which is to say their arriving guests--with an unbroken front.
They explained Paula's non-appearance with good-humored unconcern. She
was afraid if she sat down to Lucile's dinner that she would forget her
duty and eat it and find herself fatally incapacitated for cutting loose
on Mr. March's songs afterward. They must be rather remarkable songs that
required to be approached in so Spartan a manner. Well, Paula assured us
that they were. The family declined all responsibility in the matter, not
having themselves heard a note of them, but if you wanted to you might
ask Mr. Novelli, over there. He'd been working over them with Paula for
days. As for the composer, he was as much a mystery as his songs. He
wasn't coming to the dinner but was expected to appear from somewhere
afterward.

Novelli, as it happened, was not very productive of information. Half an
hour before the dinner, his wife had telephoned Lucile to ask if he
might bring a guest of his own, a certain Monsieur LaChaise, who was one
of the conductors at the Metropolitan and was to have the direction of