He did not immediately answer and the hand upon his shoulder took hold.
Under its compulsion, "I'll promise anything you ask," he said.
She spoke slowly as if measuring her words. "Never to destroy this work of yours that you call The Dumb Princess whatever may conceivably happen, however discouraged you may be about it."
"Very well," he said, "I won't."
"Say it as a promise," she commanded. "Quite explicitly."
So he repeated a form of words which satisfied her. She held him tight in both hands for an instant. Then swiftly went back to her chair.
"Don't think me too foolish," she apologized. "I haven't been sleeping much of late and I couldn't have slept to-night with a misgiving like that to wonder about."
His own misgiving obscurely deepened. He did not know whether it was the reason she had offered for exacting that promise from him or the mere tone of her voice which was lighter and more brittle than he felt it should have been. She must have read the troubled look in his face for she said at once and on a warmer note:
"Oh, my dear, don't! Don't let my vagaries trouble you. Let me tell you the message I came with. It's about the other opera. They want to put it on at once up at Ravinia. With Fournier as the officer and that little Spanish soprano as 'Dolores.' Just as you wrote it without any of the terrible things you tried to put in for Paula. It will have to be sung in French of course, because neither of them sings English. They want you there just as soon as you can come, to sign the contract and help with the rehearsals."
Once more with an utterly unexpected shift she left him floundering, speechless.
He had forgotten The Outcry except for his nightmare efforts to revamp it for Paula; had charged it off his books altogether. What Mary had told him at Hickory Hill about her labors in its behalf had signified simply, how rapturously delicious it was that she should have been so concerned for him. The possibility of a successful outcome to her efforts hadn't occurred to him.