By the time the war broke out she was as indispensable to him as his hands.  He had made her an officer of the company and paid her a salary of six thousand dollars a year, but she went on remembering his engagements, writing his letters and soothing the outraged feelings of his clients just as she had done in humbler days.  She was, in the good, old-fashioned sense, his better half.  Her amusement was the stock market and she played it cannily and with considerable success with his rather diabolic encouragement.

She was in New York when March got home, and he saw her for the first time since his return at his father’s house on a Sunday morning more than a fortnight after the evening at the Wollastons’ when Paula had sung his songs.

It was his first appearance anywhere since the afternoon in Novelli’s studio when he had shown his opera to La Chaise and Paula.  It had been agreed among them that with certain important changes, it would make an admirable vehicle for Paula’s return to the operatic stage, and being a small affair from the producer’s point of view, involving only one interior set, would be practicable for production during the summer at Ravinia in case the project for Paula’s singing there went through.  March had agreed to the changes and withdrawn into his stronghold over the grocery store with a determination not more than to come up for air until he had worried the thing into the shape they wanted.

He didn’t know it was Sunday—­having attributed the peacefulness he found pervading Fullerton Avenue to his own good conscience, a purely subjective phenomenon—­until in the parlor of his father’s house the sight of his brother Ben at the piano playing a soundless tune upon the tops of the keys, brought it home to him.  When he inquired for the rest of the family, he learned that they were up-stairs getting ready for church.

“I hope,” he said, with a grin at his younger brother, “that you aren’t suffering from that old hebdomadal sore throat of yours.”

“No, it’s all right,” Ben said, declining though to be amused.  “I’ve got a gentleman’s agreement with Sarah.  Every other Sunday.  Father’s well enough satisfied now if he gets one of us.  When they’re all gone, I can slip out and buy a Sunday paper—­jazz up the piano—­have a regular orgy.  Every other Sunday!  Gee, but it’s fierce!”

“It’s pathetic,” March said.  “Poor father!  I don’t suppose there’s any help for it.”

What struck him was the pitiful futility of his father’s persistence in trying to impose his ways, his beliefs, his will, upon one so rapidly growing into full independence.  The only sanction he had was a tradition daily becoming more fragile.  He was in for the bitterness of another disappointment.  That was what there was no help for.

Naturally young Ben didn’t interpret it this way.  “You’re a nice one to talk like that,” he said resentfully.  “You’ve always done whatever you pleased.”