eams--never were. But I do want to hear my own
music. I want to hear it done for all it's worth. I want to hear
orchestras play it and singers as good as Paula Carresford sing it. And
in order to do that I've got to look ahead a little. I've got to stop
doing always exactly as I damned please. I've got to do things because
somebody besides myself wants them done."

"Have you got something like that to do to-day--with an eye to the
consequences?" she asked.

He looked sharply around at her. She was very intent on her driving just
then. "That's a remarkably good guess in a way," he said. "I dread going
to that house to lunch. A month ago I'd have refused--or pretended I
hadn't got the invitation until too late. And I'd have pretended to
myself that it was because I didn't care to play the social game; didn't
want to take on obligations of a kind I couldn't meet. But now I've told
Mrs. Wollaston I'd come, I know the real reason why I don't want to.

"I said just now I didn't want a fur overcoat nor an automobile, and
that's eighty percent true. And yet, there's a crawly little snob
inside me that's in a panic right now because I haven't got proper
clothes to wear and because I'm going to have to sit down in front of a
lot of funny shaped forks that I don't know the special uses of.

"Oh, there's more to it than that of course. It's rather a cross-grained
situation. Wollaston doesn't like me. He thinks I'm responsible for his
wife's having kicked over the traces and signed up to sing at Ravinia
this summer. In a way, I suppose I am. She's planning to use that opera
of mine, you remember,--_The Outcry_ we called it--for a novelty,
provided they like the way I've padded up her part. The big role in it is
really for the baritone, of course. That's what I've been slaving over
for the last two weeks. If she makes a hit with it, she'll take it to the
Metropolitan next winter. Of course, there's no reason in God's world why
she shouldn't do that if she can get away with it. She hasn't any
children to look after; she told me she didn't even keep house for her
husband. All the same he regards me as a sort of potential homewrecker."

"You can't quite blame him for that, can you?" Jennie suggested. "If you
began reading a story about a beautiful young opera singer who left her
husband to go back on the stage again and sing an opera by a musical
genius she'd discovered, wouldn't you expect them to fall in love with
each other?"