ey didn't know you see--there was no program
to tell them--was whether the thing was inspired or merely dreadful, and
when it was over they sat in stony despair, waiting, like the children of
Israel, for a sign.

It was LaChaise who broke the spell by crossing the room and
unceremoniously displacing Novelli at the piano. He turned back to the
beginning of the score and began reading it, at first silently, then
humming unintelligible orchestral parts as he was able to infer them from
the transcription; finally with noisy outbursts upon the piano, to which
din Novelli contributed with one hand reached down over the conductor's
shoulder. Paula standing in the curve of the instrument, her elbows on
the lid, followed them from her copy of the score. It got to the audience
that an alert attitude of attention was no longer required of them. That
in fact, so far as the three musicians were concerned, nothing was
required of them, not even silence. As an audience they ceased to exist.
They were dissolved once more into their social elements and began a
little feverishly to talk.

The realization broke over Mary with the intensity of panic that some one
of them might speak to her. She rose blindly and slipped out into the
hall, but even there she did not feel safe. Some of them, any of them,
might follow her. She wanted to hide. There was a small room adjoining
the studio--it had been the nurse's bedroom when the other had been the
nursery--and its door now stood ajar. She slipped within and closed it
very softly behind her.

Here in the grateful half-dark she was safe enough although the door into
the studio was also part way open. There was nothing in here but
lumber--an old settee, a bookcase full of discarded volumes from the
library and an overflow of Paula's music. No one would think of looking
for her in here.

But as she turned her back upon the door that she had just closed, she
saw that some one was here, a man in khaki sitting on the edge of that
old settee, leaning forward a little, his hands clasped between his
knees. She had come in so quietly he had not heard her.

It seemed to her afterward that she must have had two simultaneous and
contradictory ideas as to who he was. She knew,--she must have known,
instantly--that he was Anthony March, but his uniform suggested Rush and
drew her over toward him just as though she had actually believed him to
be her brother. And then as he became aware of her and glanced u