It was nearly eight o’clock before he came and Paula, who was momentarily expecting John’s arrival by then, was in an agony of impatience to sign his papers and get him out of the house again.  Ware may have divined her wish and loitered out of mischievous curiosity as to the cause of it.  Or he may, merely, have been prolonging an experience which he found agreeable.  Anyhow, he wouldn’t be hurried and he wouldn’t go.  But Paula finally turned a look of despairing appeal upon Mary who thereupon announced her intention of going to to-night’s performance in the park.  She would drive, of course, and would be glad to take Mr. Ware along.  Or, for that matter, she would set him down first wherever he might want to go.  He smiled upon her with the fatuous smile of one who finds he has made an unexpected conquest and said he would be delighted to accompany Miss Wollaston anywhere.

She took him, driving pretty fast, to the Moraine Hotel and was glad the distance was not greater, for after various heavy-handed and unquenchable preliminaries he kissed her as nearly on the mouth as possible, clinging to a half-lit cigar the while, just before she whipped around into the hotel drive.  She avoided a collision with one of the stone posts narrowly enough to startle him into releasing her,—­he hadn’t realized the turn was so close—­and stopped at the lighted carriage door with a jerk that left him no option but to get out at once.

She nodded a curt good night and drove back to the park; went to one of the dressing-rooms and washed her face.  Then she came around in front to hear Edith Mason sing Romeo and Juliet.  She didn’t get just the effect she anticipated from this lovely performance because Polacco, who is Miss Mason’s husband, came and sat down beside her—­there was nothing spidery about him, thank goodness—­and in a running and vivacious commentary expressed his lively contempt for this opera of Gounod’s.  At its best it was bad Faust.  Its least intolerable melodies were quotations from Faust,—­an assertion which he proved from time to time by singing, and not very softly either, the original themes to the wrath of all who sat within a twenty-five foot radius of them.

Mary felt grateful to him for giving her something that was not maddening to think about and after the performance went with him and his wife to supper so that it was well after midnight before she returned to the cottage.

It was an ineffable relief to find it dark.  Her habit on warm nights was to sleep on the gloucester swing in the screened veranda and she made it her bed to-night, though beyond a short uneasy doze of two, she didn’t sleep at all.

At half past eight or so, just after she had sat down to breakfast, she heard her father coming down the stairs.  She tried to call to him but could command no voice and so waited, frozen, until he appeared in the doorway.

“I thought I heard you stirring down here and that it perhaps meant breakfast.  Paula won’t be down, I suppose, for hours.  She fell asleep about four o’clock and has been sleeping quietly ever since.”