Thurley had no calling cards—not every detail can be achieved in a magical space of time—so she told the maid to say it was Miss Precore and that she was expected. At which she was shown into the strangest living-room, to her untutored eyes, that she could imagine. It had a black and white tiled floor and green Pompeiian furniture with oddly shaped cushions in still odder places and distinctive mirrors hung on dull, green chains. The piano was in the center of the room and all about the walls were bizarre black and white etchings and some fascinating marines. At the end of the room, the light striking it in excellent manner, was the portrait of a man. As Thurley looked at it, she wondered if she was to go from strange room to stranger room seeing portraits which fascinated her and then meet their originals only to gaze on another portrait equally strange and winsome.

This man was noticeable for his well-shaped head with its short, dark hair and fine, large eyes, hazel she would judge, slightly mocking and lying-in-wait in their expression. They were encased with spectacles of scholarly aspect. He had a womanish chin and the tortured, lined brow of the apostle. Dressed in riding togs, he was sitting on the bench of an old garden, one hand betraying slim, artistic fingers as it rested on the head of a grizzled dog.

Thurley was settling herself in a nearby chair, trying to become accustomed to this very different sort of “scenery,” when a woman began saying in a deep, rich voice,

“Poor youngster, tired out, aren’t you? Was it scales? How I hated them! Don’t worry, I shall not ask you to sing. Put this cushion behind you—ah, here we are.”

Thurley stared at her hostess, the same scarlet-lipped, clever-faced woman of the portrait, her blue-black hair combed high to-day and her spatulate hands clasping her knee in boy fashion. She wore no jewelry, but a frock the consonance of copper and silver. It gave the effect of sunset over still water and a silver-coated Persian cat stalked out to settle himself in the fold of her skirt.

“It was very good of you to ask me,” Thurley began, feeling rather ill at ease.

“I never ask any one I don’t want. So don’t feel obligated. Every one says I’m selfishness personified. Bliss says you’re to be one of our family and I want to be sort of elder sister—anyway, don’t you approve of tea and scandal at the same time?” Her smile softened her face. She reached over to a smoking stand and found a cigarette.

Encouraged, Thurley leaned forward to say, “I’m afraid I don’t know about the family. You see I’m quite raw, as they say. And dreadfully confused. I find I have to acquire so many things besides singing exercises.”

“I look back fourteen years and see myself as I look at you. I was droll for a year or so. But Bliss claims you have a sense of humor, so everything else will follow like sheep. You don’t understand, do you?” she said kindly. “Let’s see what the ‘family’ can do for you. Bliss is such a bear at explaining that he has really turned you over to me. You see, Thurley, there are so many hundreds of the near-famous and so many truly-great persons who abuse the name that a select little coterie of us—myself and five others—after rather depressing and humorous experiences have formed what we call the family, and we are going to adopt you. It’s quite a recommendation, but you’ll realize it more five years from now. By the way, I shall not ask you to smoke—bad for tender throats.”

“How beautiful,” Thurley said softly, “a family!”

“Just a title, of course, but we have our parties and our times together and we talk of what we like in the manner we like—rather hard to plunge headlong into the real meaning of things. I think Bliss was precipitate in asking you to the Thursday dinner party.”

“He hasn’t.”

“But he will—that’s his way. He’s such a busy dear that he never does things properly. Now in the family are myself and Polly Harris, whom you’ll know better after seeing than I can tell you. Remember she has a Packard personality in that Lizzie Ford body of hers. Then Collin Hedley—”

“The artist who did your picture?”

“The same. And Mark Wirth, as great a dancer as you will ever see,” her lips folded into a displeased expression but she did not explain the reason, “and Bliss and there will be yourself. Then there are Sam Sparling, the English actor, and the original of that portrait,” she pointed to the man who had interested Thurley. “His name is Caleb Patmore.”

“Why, he writes stories,” Thurley said. “Even Birge’s Corners has become aware of him.”

“Bless his wicked heart!” Ernestine said swiftly.

Thurley began to wonder why Caleb Patmore ever used any other woman as a model for heroines or Collin Hedley for his paintings. Perhaps it was Ernestine’s unusual fashion of dress which made every one feel that she had worn only the least beautiful of her gowns or the careless, homely way she dressed her hair or her unjewelled, ugly hands which could coax from the pianoforte such music as Thurley had never dreamed could exist—or her sarcastic worldliness tempered with a girlish idealism which made her face bright with smiles. Then there was the strange, restless sadness in her eyes and the way the scarlet mouth had of dropping into hurt little curves, symbolic of many things of which Thurley was still ignorant. Ernestine Christian was indifferent, even insolent, regarding her fame, but jealously proud of her theories about it. And when she mentioned Bliss Hobart a few moments later, she said enthusiastically,

“He is such a wonderful idealist, so tremendously sincere and fearless! Most idealists lack the courage to express themselves and they live and die with the world no wiser, but Bliss—! some day, when you, too, have become worldly wise and a bit tired ’way inside, you will understand.”

To which Thurley innocently replied, “Is Caleb Patmore an idealist?”

Ernestine began playing with the fringe of her sash. “Now what do you think?”

Thurley looked at the portrait and then at her hostess. “I don’t know,” she evaded.

“Tut-tut, tell me what you think! Never mind what you know.”

“His novels, even though they sell in as small towns as the Corners, are rather—rather—” She floundered piteously.

Ernestine came to the rescue, her scarlet lips curving down in hurt fashion as she answered, “His novels for the most part comprise tattling on blondined art models—and brides! Caleb believes that art must be on a strictly commercial basis and that no art should be enduring, ‘any more than a bath,’ as he explains, ‘but quite as necessary and frequent.’”

“Oh, he is wrong!” Instinctively Thurley was displeased.

“May you always think so, but when the distressingly rich wheeze up in satin-lined cabs and ask you to accompany them to a distressingly vulgar palace and have you sing a song or two at a thousand dollars each; when every one comes salaaming and saluting you, and you, too, begin to have visions of acquiring a vulgar palace all your own and are, therefore, pompous and impossible as so many of us foolish children of light allow ourselves to become; when you look about the salon to select the richest husband or admirer and deliberately neglect your voice for your coiffure and your repertoire for your wardrobe—well, perhaps you may withstand it, but it is a rare happening! Bliss says he has yet to find it otherwise.”

“A thousand dollars a song.” Thurley recalled that day—how many lifetimes ago—that Dan engaged her to sing at his circus in connection with “the great swinging man” and had emptied his spending-money pocket into her ragged lap. “Oh, no, they only pay a thousand dollars a song in one of Mr. Patmore’s novels.”

“Mr. Patmore,” continued the woman who loved him more dearly than she did herself, “takes his copy from friends, like a bee flitting here and there and returning to the hive honey-laden. We have all accused him of hiding behind screens to gain conversation.”

Thurley laughed. “Do they never tip over?”

“They do if we suspect he is behind them,” Ernestine replied with a smile.

“What does he do with all his money? He must be very rich if the reports are true. Why even at the Corners we sold a hundred copies of ‘Victorious Victoria,’ and it was stupid, even the description of a new way for Victoria to be kissed.”

“‘Victorious Victoria’! It is engraven on my heart. I tried harder to make him burn the manuscript than I did to play well before Queen Mary and King George,” she said in a dull voice. “Yet she was ‘Victorious Victoria,’ for she gave her sponsor a new motor and a lot of foolish jewelry and a Japanese valet and some first editions that he boasted of having wrenched from a millionaire at an auction sale! You see, Caleb thinks there is no need to sacrifice for one’s ideals or to be above a purchase price for mediocre work. He says, ‘Writing is a trade. We must all come in on a time clock or be taken to an insane asylum. Give the public what it wants and with their money we can buy what we want. Let the public take the consequent softening of the brain. Younger generations will always be appearing like spring violets and measles to save us authors’ and artists’ bacon!’ There is the alpha and omega of his philosophy. One might as well throw oneself against a stone fortress as to make him reason otherwise. Blind, blind as an adder!” She broke off abruptly to call Thurley’s attention to some pottery she had picked up in Dutch Guiana which could not be obtained save as one became a friend of the natives.

Then a maid came in with the tea-cart and Ernestine began asking as to “one lump or two—cream or sugar or lemon.”

“Your dress is so interesting,” Thurley remarked to break the lull.

“Thanks. I loathe clothes, yet have to have those dreadful creations when I go on tour—the critics always expect it. They put notices in the social columns, too! My revenge will come when I am in the perilous forties. I shall be constantly clad in black chiffon and steel embroideries with ermine and broadcloth for the outer layers. I aspire to be the sort of older-than-I-look-but-not-yet-ancient person who has the proper air of mystery, always an asset, the sure, fine lines of a Helleu dry point, you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” Thurley admitted drolly.

Ernestine clapped her hands. “Fine, we are coming on! Take some more marmalade. Please don’t let them spoil you, Thurley, you’re so nice as you are. I mean the army of make-overs who assail any one with ability. They have not begun attacks as yet. Wait until you are asked for written recommendations and some one invents a Thurley perfume. Oh, that you might be spared!” She held up her hands in horror.

“Does Mr. Hobart really think I shall be a great singer?” Thurley was experiencing her first stage fright, hence the repetition.

“No one sees him the second time unless he does,” Ernestine informed her. “Tell me about yourself. Remember I’m a cross pianist who dislikes having ability and yet would die if I did not. You can trust me, because no one ever comes near me!”

“Don’t you adore your work?” Thurley asked in reproach.

Ernestine shook her head. “Really, I think genius is something no other member of your family would countenance, something your ancestors have saved up to hand you unawares. I cannot help playing the piano. They say I even make people like Bach, but I wish I could, for it is life to me, after a fashion, and death after another. You cannot mix house-and-garden living and a career any more than oil and water. It must be the choice absolute of one or the other. If a big person marries, she often marries some one inferior and therein lies disaster. Moral, do not marry.”

Thurley’s fingers stole inside her pocket to clutch at the corner of Betsey’s letter. “But you can be happy, if you do not marry,” she said uneasily.

“Has it begun to worry so soon? Wake up, Silver Heels! Tell her there is much else besides the little hope-chest crowded with pink-ribboned nighties and cook books.” She stirred the Persian kitten with her slipper toe.

“I—I’ve been engaged,” Thurley announced, not knowing why.

“Of course you have, living in a small town and with those eyes! Who was he—not the constable? I could believe anything of you, Thurley, but that!” Ernestine was kindly and teasing all in one.

“Just a nice boy,” she said with an effort, “but I gave him up.”

“You did wisely. It is the trying to delude ourselves to clutch with one hand for a laurel wreath and for orange blossoms with the other. That is what makes us failures on both sides of the question. You must see Collin’s lovely country place up the Hudson, and we must go to some lectures together. Besides, you have all Europe to exclaim over. I’m going to walk through Spain next summer. Come along?”

“I’d love to if—if I have the money—”

“We’ll find the money. You must do these things. Bliss is making a little machine out of you with his blessed, idealistic self, hidden like a monk under his habit. Never mind—bright days for Young America—want to hear me play?”

“Would you, really?”

“Listen!” Rising, she went to the piano and began “The Two Larks,” gliding from that into some things of Grieg.

When she finished, Thurley, ruthlessly scattering cake crumbs, came beside her. The timid country girl had vanished. She was the wild-rose Thurley with the “fire, dash, touch of strangeness.”

“Let me sing for you! You can tell me the truth, better than Mr. Hobart. Oh, but you can!” she begged.

Ernestine pointed to the shelves of music, but Thurley shook her head.

“I’ll play for myself,” sitting on the bench beside her hostess.

The chords were few and far between, but the girl’s voice rose high and clear with the ethereal quality of a child’s, as she sang an old Scotch ballad.

Ernestine Christian drew her to her with a sudden, deft gesture. “Shall I pity or congratulate you?” she asked, her sallow cheeks flushed with excitement.

Then they fell to talking, as women will, of lighter things, and by degrees Thurley found herself in Ernestine Christian’s bedroom—a striking affair in yellow lacquered furniture with Chinese designs in gold, ivory walls and huge, black fur rugs which she had brought from Russia. There was point de venise and fillet lace over gray silk for the furniture coverings and a veritable sheath of photographs, among which Thurley found Bliss Hobart’s.

Then Thurley found herself taking note of Ernestine’s gowns, learning many things which she resolved to put into practice. She discovered that Ernestine Christian had just celebrated her thirtieth birthday and was indifferent to the fact in any way; that Bliss Hobart had had a fever when a lad and hence the grayish hair; that Polly Harris was as good a treat as a fairy pantomime but she carried a heartbreak bravely concealed, for she loved Collin Hedley, the childish, irresponsible artist, and she had not the greatness of genius in herself for which she so longed. Also, there was a Madame Lissa Dagmar whom Ernestine disapproved of but spoke no open ill concerning. This Madame Dagmar threatened the welfare of Mark Wirth, the dancer, for she had fallen in love with him and turned his head with strange notions, and, lastly, this Thurley’s woman heart told her, Ernestine Christian loved the popular, irreverent novelist, Caleb Patmore, but she believed marriage would interfere with his work as well as her own, so she steadfastly stood him off in that tantalizing fashion common to women of brilliant attainments and childish, hungry hearts.

When Thurley left her, the sting as to Lorraine and Dan’s engagement had been spirited away—she knew not how. Perhaps it was the graceful way in which Ernestine had welcomed her, the new surroundings, the music, the confidences about these “stars in the artistic firmament,” as Birge’s Corners would have expressed it, the knowledge she was to be one of the sacred family which had hidden its existence even from press agents, or, thrilling thought, that she was to be famous and rich—or was it none of these? Was it that Thurley learned more about Bliss Hobart?—that he was an idealist who seldom expressed ideals, lest they become trampled upon and return to him in cynical disguise; that he was not old but young in fact and unmarried, and, as yet, interested in no woman personally save as his two friends, Polly and Ernestine, amused him; and, best of all, that he told Ernestine to be particularly nice to Thurley Precore, nicer than she had been to any other girl he had trained and presented to the public!