Bliss Hobart was impossible to describe, Thurley concluded. As she first spied him behind his carved teakwood desk, one of a hundred luxuries in his elaborate studio, he appeared a small, insignificant person with an overlarge head betraying the aristocracy of an old race and piercing gray eyes. His hair, a salt and pepper affair with a wild front-lock waving as signal for a controversy, showed the result of a fever, not age, she afterwards learned, and his long, almost grotesque nose and flexible mouth with its deeply-dimpled chin inspired her with a desire to laugh. But as he came across the room to greet Miss Clergy and give Thurley a cheerful nod, she saw that he was as tall as her own self and his shoulders were broad and powerful, while his wonderfully shaped hands championed his abilities. He was dressed more foppishly than she had ever seen a man dress—a blue serge with a corded white waistcoat, an exquisite sapphire pin in the cream satin scarf and a watch chain as slender as a woman’s. As he whisked out his handkerchief characteristically, she discovered it to be of more cobwebby texture than her own.

Facing him, her blue eyes staring in naÏve wonderment, Thurley asked herself why she had experienced the illusion of this man’s being a clever dwarf with cruel, calculating eyes! Whatever Bliss Hobart thought of Thurley would have been impossible to state. He seemed more interested in Miss Clergy whose thin face was flushed with excitement and whose small self wore a sheathlike dress of black silk, which suited her well.

For the moment Bliss Hobart seemed a respectful footman solicitous about his mistress’ comfort, as he “fussed” over selecting a chair for Miss Clergy and asked as to draughts. Thurley was left in confusion in the middle of the great room, looking out at Central Park.

She tried to steady her thoughts by taking inventory of the room’s contents, but it added to her bewilderment. There was something of every period in furnishings—shrug-shouldered French, the burly Jacobean, the Victorian redolent of posies, curls and lace mitts, subtle Oriental and convenient Mission—there was rare glass which had successfully imprisoned Italian sunshine, Holland delft-ware, cloisonne, snowy linen panels from China encrusted with gold dragons, lamps with the magic of India and great jars of Navajo pottery. Behind the desk was a door halfway ajar—Thurley caught her breath as she looked at it. This must be the sacred spot where one was “tried out.” The agent finally arranging the interview had told them that when Bliss Hobart was convinced he had a find, he went into the little anteroom and played accompaniments or scales or whatever he wished, while he tested voices. But before he heard one sing, he had a way of deciding whether or not it was worth while to pass through the anteroom door.

Thurley wondered if she could make any sound at all—her voice seemed frozen. Supposing she did not meet Miss Clergy’s expectations? Supposing she were forced to return to Birge’s Corners or to stay in New York as a ribbon clerk, sharing another ribbon clerk’s hall bedroom? She began looking at the collection of autographed photographs which lined the walls, the marble statues, the bas reliefs, some paintings of an interesting, delicate sort in pastels and shadowy outlines which hung close beside the teakwood desk. Then the portrait of a striking, but not beautiful, woman claimed Thurley’s attention. The woman had a clever, quick face with flashing black eyes, almost as black as Dan’s, and blue-black hair, quite like Dan’s, combed into a huge knot at the nape of her thin, yet attractive, neck. She were a Grecian frock—two layers of white voile and a layer of black with a jet cord for a girdle. It was a merciless frock, Thurley decided, for it showed the woman’s bony, frail figure and unlovely, long arms with wonderfully live hands and surprisingly stubby fingers. On the third finger of each hand was an antique ring, the glow of the jewels shining on the white lap of her frock. Something about the picture fascinated Thurley. She was wondering if this woman were not Bliss Hobart’s wife; if she did not find it a stupendous task to be as clever and as keen as her husband. Yet those well-modeled scarlet lips and the rather masculine chin told Thurley that the woman was equal to almost any task. By contrast, glancing in a side mirror, Thurley felt herself overdone and impossible. She longed to exit silently and drop down the nearest elevator shaft in peaceful oblivion.

Before she had reached the studio she had felt sure of herself, scornful of criticism. Miss Clergy told her she looked a picture in her frock of white crÊpe, embroidered with dull red, and a smart crimson sailor to match. But as she pulled off her gloves in nervousness she felt unfit, impossible, one mammoth gaucherie—her wilful brown hair would creep out in untidy strands and her face grow flushed in spite of the conventional coating of powder. She wondered what Dan Birge would say if he came into the studio of the “wisest and most cynical man in New York’s art world” and saw her!

“Ah,” Hobart was saying, “we can go inside now—”

Thurley started. Miss Clergy was sitting in blissful rapture in an easy chair by the window, her gray head nodding at Thurley in delight.

Thurley wondered how long she had been standing spellbound. She had thought and felt so many strange things and emotions that the time she was sure must be great.

“I won’t keep you out here,” Hobart was saying, just the suggestion of a blur in his pleasant voice. “Some one might stray in, and I’ve an appointment for lunch. Miss Clergy, please help yourself to something to read.”

“I sha’n’t be lonesome,” Miss Clergy answered. They were a strange pair, this wild-rose girl and the little ghost-lady who had quickened just in time to make the wild rose become hothouse variety.

“What were you looking at so intently?” Hobart paused before they went ahead.

“That picture of your wife,” Thurley answered without delay.

He laughed. “Dear me, that is a very famous person who is an intimate friend of mine and a friend of my other intimate friends. Her name is Ernestine Christian and she is a pianist. Paderewski thinks no one plays Beethoven as well as Ernestine—you may meet her some day. But remember that in New York the portraits of ladies hanging nearest gentlemen’s desks are never likely to be their wives. Tell me, what do you think of the painting?”

“That it was by the same artist who did those.” Thurley pointed childishly.

“Right—Collin Hedley—you’ve heard of him?”

She shook her head. “We live at Birge’s Corners,” she said demurely.

“Then you will hear of him, particularly if you meet Miss Christian. Collin painted her portrait as a revenge, because she insisted that men with Van Dyke beards always have a queer sense of humor. I take it you understand who boasts of a Van Dyke beard. Then they gave me the picture because I am so fond of them both.” He was leading the way across the room.

As she stepped inside the anteroom, Hobart closed the door. Looking about she saw tawny, rough plaster walls, highly polished floors, a white marble mantel seemingly unconscious of the fire of birch logs ready to be kindled. Gold-colored curtains shut out daylight; peasant chairs with rush seats and a great, dark-wooded settle piled with cushions gave the proper background for the piano which stood in the center of the room.

“Sit down,” Hobart said pleasantly. “I was so interested in your fairy godmother that I have not had a good look at you. There—so—I can see your eyes. How old are you?” His voice changed to that of an impersonal and rather impatient stranger’s.

“A little past twenty. Does it matter how old a person is?”

“Find that out for yourself! Sometimes—sometimes not. Now tell me, where were you born and educated and are you engaged to half a dozen lads in Birge’s Backyard or wherever it is? And why do you want to be an opera singer, and what has led you to fancy you could be? Is it because Miss Clergy has advanced you money? Before you answer, let me add that money does not keep you in grand opera or any other art work. I’m not saying that occasionally it does not get you in, although not as often as envious laymen like to imagine. But it cannot keep you on the stage or in the hearts of the people unless you merit the so doing. You must use your brain, as well as sing. You may have the voice of angels and yet fail on the operatic or dramatic stage. You may have the angelic voice and heavenly beauty and celestial gowns—and still be registered as zero, unless you use your brain. You must employ intellect, wit, sincerity, industry, the same as if you were building a house or cooking a meal or raising a family. A mediocre singer with brains can always surpass naturally endowed, but mentally sluggish, singers. Remember that!” He leaned back in his chair and his gray eyes narrowed somewhat; the dimples in his chin vanished and with them the good-natured, kindly expression.

As if she were pleading with a judge, Thurley, who all in an instant swept from her savage little self everything she had fancied she believed, found herself beginning with admirable logic,

“I was born in Thurley, Idaho, so they named me Thurley. Just think—if I hadn’t been born until the next day, it would have been Hoskins, Idaho! So far luck was with me!”

Half an hour later she ended with, “I shall never go back to the Corners, and I shall pay Miss Clergy for all she is doing, no matter if she has no need of the money. And I shall never marry any one! You see that was my one promise to Miss Clergy. At least not for twenty years, she said, because by that time she would be dead and could haunt me if I went to behaving foolishly.”

Hobart smiled at her as genially as he had smiled at Miss Clergy, remarking, “Ah, the de luxe Topsy, I take it! I much prefer a Topsy prospect to a Little Eva prospect with a myriad of interested relations who feel certain I cannot comprehend the wonderful way their Little Eva sings ‘Madame Butterfly,’ proving it with clippings from the music column of the Standing Stone Gazette! After all, no one is really interested in you. I take it Miss Clergy is keen on seeing you cheat a man of love; isn’t that it?”

“Yes,” loneliness swept over Thurley for the instant, “I don’t suppose any one really cares about me, because the people who did care I ran away and left.” She caught her underlip quickly.

“Then the decks are cleared for action,” Hobart said with relief. “Before you sing to-day, let me add that the greatest lesson to learn in order to be a genius, no matter in what capacity, is to be impersonal. Talent is personal. That is why you have so excellent a foundation.”

“Always impersonal?”

He shrugged his shoulders, impatient of the interruption. “We can’t tell when I haven’t even heard you sing. My dear child, were I to map out destinies for every one who comes to me, I should be quite mad. As it is, to be the ‘final judgment’ takes the disposition of a dove and the constitution of a lion. You’ll see what I mean later on. You have had so little education in one way that it will be hard for you to catch up. You’ll have to work without ceasing. But you don’t look like a shirker.”

“I’m not,” she said, hating herself for the flat remark.

“There are two kinds of persons in this world,” he mused, rising and going over to the piano, “those who wait for a dead man’s shoes and those keen enough to employ their own bootmaker. I never hear any one sing unless I judge them to be of the last class and so,” sitting down and magically running his fingers over the keys, “tell me—what can you sing?”

“I love the rÔle of Marguerite,” she began innocently.

He paused to chuckle. “Bravo! There never was a really normal soprano who did not aspire to Marguerite for her dÉbut. It is as much a soprano symptom, as it is a tenor symptom to yearn to do sacred arias on Easter Sunday and a basso to growl to be heard at open air music festivals. The only rhythmic thing about contraltos is their delight in having cigars named after them.” He looked up to see if she was laughing at his nonsense.

“But why?” she demanded seriously.

“Well, why are brides fond of trying scalloped potatoes in new silver pudding dishes? Why do young widows join bridge clubs or why does a boy cherish his first teeth to trade in at school for king-chestnuts?” He picked out a flippant little chord as punctuation.

“You must not call me too stupid,” Thurley said unexpectedly, leaning her arms on the piano, “but my original sense of humor—the one I was born with—had to be put in cold storage when I settled down at Birge’s Corners and began to borrow the minister’s library in sections. They just could not have understood it. But I do believe it is reviving.”

“A sense of humor is the most precious thing in the world,” Hobart told her. “It ranks with a sense of honor. And if you had to repress it, I am glad you merely put it in cold storage. Sing this scale, please,” he added, rapidly striking the notes.

Thurley sang it; then another and some exercises which she thought difficult and felt proud of having done so easily. They were exercises the city organist had halfway taught her and which she had practised diligently by means of Betsey Pilrig’s parlor organ.

“Some more—lightly, quickly—no, no, you’re hissing—try mi—mi-mi—so.” Again she followed the notes cleverly—so she thought.

Hobart interrupted with a discord. “You naturally breathe well, but you are frightened. You are not singing but faking, and trying to make me think you are not. My dear young person, if I were not able to tell in half a second who is really singing and who is not, I would be forced to abdicate instanter. Now either go home and rest up and take off that company manner and then come back here and sing or admit you cannot sing or else—sing!” He rested his hands on the keys again.

“I can sing,” Thurley said almost sullenly. “I gave up marrying the man I love in order to sing.”

“Good plot! I’ll tell it to Caleb Patmore, the novelist, but my line is not writing. Because you have done this so-called heroic feat, do not fancy you can become a grand opera singer as a reward, any more than the schoolgirl’s fancy is true that nuns are broken-hearted young women taking poetic refuge in the veil. You are so young and fearless that you remind me of a nice, willing but as yet impossible puppy dog who needs to be shown his place in life. You do not understand that if you have been given a voice and the will and brains to train it and the soul of a true artist to preside over all,” his voice was earnest, “what a gigantic task you are taking upon yourself. No one has said it better than Tolstoy and Aylmer Maude. The former tells us, ‘The task of art is enormous, art should cause violence to be set aside ... art is not a pleasure, a solace nor an amusement, it is a great matter, art is an organ of human life transmitting man’s reasonable perceptions into feeling.’ And Maude has, to my mind, finished the situation by saying that ‘the one great quality which makes a work of art truly contagious is its sincerity.’ Voila!” he began strumming bass notes.

“I must write those things down,” Thurley whispered. “I must learn them—”

“Why?”

“They’re so—so—what is it? Help me out! Remember I’m from Birge’s Corners, I’ve such lots of things to learn and I’m really quite afraid of you!” She leaned nearer him. “I’ll have to study languages and history and no end of stuff and have hours a day of music and love no one and be impersonal, until I am able to have the same look that Ernestine Christian has—she has learned to be impersonal! I want to cease to be a country girl with a good voice and be an individual. Please, Mr. Hobart, let me sing Marguerite for you! I’m not half so afraid of that as I am of scales—”

He began the music, and, looking away from him at the rough, plaster walls, Thurley peopled them with a sea of faces, as she had done hundreds of times in Betsey Pilrig’s parlor or at the little cemetery while she was waiting for Dan. She wondered if Miss Clergy heard her sing and if there would come a chilling burst of criticism from this man. She felt that, if this were so, she would turn on him in unexplainable defense of her voice, ignorant as she was of the things still to be achieved.

Hobart rose from the piano and came to put his firm hands on her shoulders. “Genius has as many symptoms as measles,” he said abruptly. “I’m afraid you’ve every last one of them!”

“You mean,” she said, tense as an unsprung trap, “that it is going to be worth while?” Things were black and queerly shaped to her eyes, due to annoying tears. She thought Hobart’s face a dozen cynical, smiling faces peeping at her from all sides. “Is it worth while, if I work very, very hard?”

“Thurley (almost Hoskins) Precore,” it was as if he pronounced a decree, “for us to stand here and exchange the compliments and promises and superlative statements we are both thinking would be as annoying as women haggling over which shall pay the cabfare! We could drag all manner of red herring over the course and merely waste smart sentences which are in demand for after-dinner speeches. But if you work as I tell you and do not become personal either in your relationship with me or your other musical associates—it isn’t as hard-hearted as it sounds—and if this presuming young rustic from Birge’s Backyard stays in the offing—well—you’ll make your dÉbut in about a year!”

Thurley did not answer.

“If you are going to faint,” he continued nonchalantly, “the settle is well-cushioned and handy. I had to have one put in here, for they would go down in absurd little lumps all about the room—sometimes with joy, more often rage! I see you are not going to faint, so please sing something else—something to show up the bad spots. Marguerite is rather full of deceptive curlycues—ah, I know—hymns—yes, real old-time gospel hymns! Then we’ll do more exercises, because fright has taken wings.”

He played half a dozen hymns, all of which she sang without hesitation, laughing down at him between stanzas. She could not understand her attitude towards this baffling, fearsome person, young-old or old-young whichever he might prove to be. She found herself wondering if she would ever meet Ernestine Christian and Collin Hedley and Caleb Patmore, or if being impersonal was to exclude them as well as Hobart....

“Good, good,” he said, turning from the piano and hugging up his knees. “Well, we’ll have to get to work as fast as ever we can. I believe in ‘muscular art,’ the same as some one else has said of ‘muscular Christianity’—a sound mind in a sound body is the best foundation for lasting success. Success is the sincerity with which you do your work and the good your work does some one else—remember that when ennui bursts in an unwelcomed guest and you begin to ape some of the near-great who hover about. Art is the expression of a man’s joy in his work and you’ve everything about and in you, as well as before you, to prove to the world the truth of that saying. Many new and confusing things will happen shortly. All sorts and conditions of people, attentions, praise, blame, drudgery, ease, dissipations, monotonous routine—heavens, child, it makes my head ache to think of an absolutely de luxe Topsy from Birge’s Backyard with the voice of an announcing angel set down in New York and told to prepare herself for grand opera!”

He patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t look startled, Thurley—I’ll have to call you Thurley because Precore sticks in my throat—you’ll weather through and some time—I’ll tell you a pet scheme of mine that perhaps—” He actually was confused as if he regretted the remark. “But for now, I’ll start you off with having you report here every day at eleven and again at three—and you’re to do all the other things I tell you. Well, did you think I would order you to Italy first to get mellow, fall in love with one of those damned Italian officers with a heliotrope-lined coat and then come back and let me teach you to sing? God taught you to sing before you came to earth, and you’ve remembered His teaching.... Just learn the things we men are fools enough to think we must know and you have won!”

He closed the pianoforte and opened the door.

“No more exercises?” Thurley was tingling with excitement.

“You’re all nerves! Do you think I need more exercises to make me quite sure about you—the same as an apron never fails to convince a man of the wearer’s domesticity? To-morrow we begin to polish and prune. Go home and lie down and think about the frivolous things in the world. You’ll be set to work fast enough ... ah, Miss Clergy, and did you hear us?”

“I heard Thurley sing,” Miss Clergy said abruptly. “Well—well?”

Thurley answered by stooping down and clasping the ghost lady in her arms. “He says it is worth your while,” she whispered.

“Then it has been worth everything,” Miss Clergy answered, more to herself than to Thurley.

Hobart’s secretary came in with some announcement cards and Hobart paused before he read them to say good-by.

“To-morrow at eleven, and Baxter will see you this afternoon about other teachers. Good-by, Miss Clergy, and, Thurley, happy days!”

He was so kindly again and with the suggestion of a schoolboy pal that Thurley could not resist the asking, “Oh, do you find many people worth all your trouble?”

Hobart’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “To quote a most reliable authority, the pushcart man, ‘What I maka on the peanut, I losa on the banan!’”

As they passed out the door, Thurley heard a woman’s voice saying, “Tell him Lissa Dagmar has come to say good-by. He won’t keep me waiting. I’m sailing this afternoon.” There was both a snarl and a purr in the voice, and Thurley wondered if Lissa Dagmar had proved “peanut or banan.”