It had been one of the great experiences of his life, writing that opera.
Jennie's reminder that he had once believed it good, was a conservative
statement. LaChaise and Paula were deeply impressed by the power, both of
its music and its drama and saw possibilities in it for a sensational
success. The drawback, fatal unless it could be overcome, lay in the fact
that the dominant role in it was that of the baritone. Dramatically the
soprano's part was good enough, but there was nowhere near enough for
her to sing. There was no reason though, they both asserted, and sent
March away from their conference at least half convinced, why the girl's
part could not be greatly amplified. There were various expedients;--a
preliminary scene between the girl and her brother; an apostrophe to an
absent lover; a prayer. Also instead of being frozen into terror-stricken
silence by her ravisher's monstrous purpose, she could just as well be
represented as making a desperate resistance. She could plead with him,
denounce him; attempt to take advantage of his drunkenness and trick him.
It could be made as good a woman's part as the big act of _Tosca_.

March had assented to all this and gone to work.

Paula did not tell him, as he had gloomily prophesied to Jennie, to take
the new first scene he brought her that Sunday out to the ash can. And,
indeed, it sounded so much better when they read it over together, that
he was for the moment reassured. But her attitude toward the opera was
different from the one she had taken toward the group of Whitman songs,
and this difference grew more marked at their subsequent sessions over
it. There had been about the songs the glamour of discovery. One does not
hasten to apply the assayer's acid to treasure trove. And, too, it was an
altruistic impulse which had prompted her to take up the songs.

There aren't many people who can travel steadily, or very far, on that
motivation, and Paula was not one of them. From the moment when she took
the plunge, ignored--all but defied--her husband's wishes, and signed the
Ravinia contract, she ceased to be concerned for anything, broadly
speaking, but her own success. March's opera, then, was not, to her, the
expression of his genius but a potential vehicle for hers. She was
acutely critical of it. She knew what she wanted and it was not
thinkable that she should put up with anything less.

She was not aware of this change of attitude. She was blessed with a
vigo