d from bottom, to top
and back again with a series of curious modulations. Then opening his bag
and beginning to get out his tools, he said, "Before I went into the
army, there was a man named Bernstein in these parts, who used to
perpetrate outrages like this on pianos."

"Yes," said Paula, "he tuned this one two weeks ago."

Without so much as a by your leave, Anthony March went to work.

It was Paula's childlike way to take any pleasurable event simply as a
gift from heaven without any further scrutiny of its source; with no
labored attempt to explain its arrival and certainly with no misgivings
as to whether or not she was entitled to it. Anthony March was such a
gift. By the time he had got to work on her own piano, she knew he was
pure gold and settled down joyously to make the most of him.

It was not until she attempted to give an account to the Wollastons at
dinner that night, of the day they had spent together--for they had made
a day of it--that she realized there was anything odd, not to say
astonishing, about the episode. How in the first place did it happen that
it was Paula's piano he tuned instead of the one in the drawing-room?
This was, of course, inexplicable until she could get John by himself and
tell him about it. One couldn't report to Lucile his phrase about the
painted harlot. She had to content herself with stressing the fact that
he intended to tune the drawing-room piano after he had finished with
hers and then somehow he hadn't got around to it.

But why had an unaccredited wanderer whom Lucile had found in the park
even been given a chance at the piano up-stairs? Well, he had looked to
Paula like an artist when she had let him in the door. You could tell,
with people like that, if you had an eye for such matters. And then his
recognition of Bernstein's nefarious handiwork had clenched her
conviction. Certainly she had been right about it; he had absolutely
bewitched that piano of hers. She didn't believe there was another such
tuner in the United States. If they would come up-stairs after dinner,
she'd show them. They had always thought she was unnecessarily fussy
about it, but now they should see they were mistaken. It was like
unveiling a statue. The poor thing had been there all the time, covered
up so that you couldn't hear it. She was so excited about it she could
hardly leave it alone.

And he had been as delighted with the results as she herself. After he
had played it a while