Spring brought again the longing for Birge’s Corners. Nothing else appealed to Thurley in the way of a vacation. Europe was barred from the engagement tablet, cruising brought memories of Lissa’s yachting party and society flirted in vain with Thurley to gain her appearance at Allied benefits and bazaars. Beyond a compliance to please her manager, she declined.

During the winter Miss Clergy had become more and more insensible to everything save the fact that Thurley Precore was a prima donna and she had achieved her aim. Such matters as vacations were left in Thurley’s hands.

Ernestine had decided her work was going stale, so a California school where only a handful of the wise and great assembled took her westward with scarcely time to say good-by, Caleb complained.

Caleb devoted himself to emotional war charities since they sold his books—particularly when he would stand in the Belgian booth decorated with streamers like a true harlequin and, fountain pen in hand, await the onslaught of damsels demanding he would autograph their copies of his novels.

Lissa also gave up her time to following the wake of these functions, since she looked well in lace gowns and the supposed patriotic charity on her part bore rich returns in the way of pupils. Watching Lissa, Thurley became aware of another truth: to be an intriguer in art or any other capacity requires that one be not a fool but possessed of shrewd talents and determination. It takes much time and foresight to be successful in this bent, but if one follows this doubtful path to achieving distinction one has little time left with which to pursue the ethical path of sincere work which wins its own reward.

Besides being an intriguer, Lissa reflected Mark’s fame. She never lost an opportunity with which to have their names associated, to call herself a “romantic old sister to the dear lad,” or appear at his recitals to sing some lightweight thing with the high, phenomenal note which alone won applause.

“It seems to me,” Collin said to Thurley one June afternoon when they were enduring a recital of Lissa’s songs at a lawn fÊte, “that God started in to give Lissa a wonderful voice. He began with this tiptop note and then, as He realized what she was bound to be in spite of every one concerned, He did not bestow anything else on her, but she must have slipped down to earth pirating that note for surely it was meant to be taken away from her!”

Thurley nodded her gratitude for his expression and Polly, who was sitting on Collin’s other side, gave vent to an impudent giggle.

“Thurley, did you know people say that ‘Miss Precore is a recluse’?” Polly asked her a moment later. “That she refuses to sing for charity?”

“Of course Miss Precore has not worked all winter, oh, no,” Thurley’s temper flared up. “Polly and Collin, I tell you both that I am tired even to my professional expression. Look at Lissa—look at Mark—look here,” she began, pointing out other salubrities and celebrities who were murmuring or warbling “poor bleeding Europe” in properly guttural tones.

Polly was thoughtful and when Collin roused her to explain why, she said, “Suppose we go to war, Thurley, what then?”

“We’ll do what is needed,” Thurley said in as sharp fashion as Hobart could have replied.

Hortense Quinby came searching the audience to deliver a telegram to Thurley, delighted with her opportunity to appear important.

It was a good-by note from Hobart and of no importance, so Thurley thought as she read it:

She rose and excused herself from the entertainment, which caused half the audience to say that “Thurley Precore liked to create scenes” and the other half “she was a purse-proud young woman with no patriotism.”

Polly and Collin stayed the performance out, since two of the women Collin had painted were taking part in the tableaux and had sent him those telling three-cornered notes on mauve linen requesting that he see them as “France Enraged” and “Belgium at Bay.”

Polly stayed because Collin stayed. After the next number was well under way, Collin, stroking that mad, blond beard of his, asked,

“What’s wrong with Thurley? She’s not been herself all winter and she is going off in her voice.”

“Who wouldn’t—living with a ghost person and working harder than an engineer? Bliss will find her a coach this fall who will treat her mercilessly and make her grind again. It isn’t that any singing teacher can teach Thurley things; they merely shut her up in figurative fashion in a dark closet until she promises to behave and sing the way in which she knows she should.”

“She went it rapidly for a time,” Collin reflected, languidly applauding the antics of a folk dance done by “lanky hanks of shes”—“do look behind to see if Hortense Quinby is listening. I’ve an idea she sells her eavesdropping per word to Caleb ... ever notice how she plays ferret when two or three are gathered together talking in an undertone?”

“She’s in pursuit of the professor of ethnology that Mrs. Barnhardt has in tow; he’s a widower on the loose,” Polly chuckled.

“All power to her—what’s on for your summer?”

“Work, I presume.” Polly’s face lost its gaiety. Drudging through a winter of failure with Bliss Hobart telling her she was naught but wilful in refusing to accept the inevitable and also a position—salt in the wound—of assistant librarian for the opera house—it was sufficient to bring about the change of expression. “What is ahead for you?”

“No work, I refuse all commissions, the Allied generals might beg in vain. I’m going to play; there’s a lot of us who are going to visit Bliss at his hermitage.”

“What luck! Really invade his sacred portals?”

“Well, we call it play. I’m to go and the Russian who writes and that funny little man with the square head, Tyronne—he does those historical essays no one reads but every one looks at underneath a glass case in a hundred years or so. And Caleb and Bliss had a row about Caleb’s not writing as he should and Caleb isn’t coming. Poor old Sam is in Lunnon recruiting and he is out, too. But we are going to try to loaf away the summer. I’ll put a sign on my gate, Shoo flies, don’t bother me, I’ve gone off to the north countree—”

He was selfishly unconscious of Polly’s expression.

“How splendid!” was all she said. “I wish I were a boy. I’d go along as Oolong Formosa, the only valet who did not anger the master by gaining a university diploma just when I had become proficient in whisk brooming!”

Collin laughed. “You’re a weird little thought,” he said carelessly. “Sometimes I think you’ll never grow old. We’ll be tottering graybeards and Ernestine and Thurley wrinkled dowagers, but you will still be Polly, brown-faced and boyish! Now, I say, why not give up your big dream for a bit, leave it for the next lifetime and will yourself to be born a long-haired Polish genius with opera scores fairly dripping off your brow—come on, Polly, be my secretary. I need one. Look at the young women who do Caleb’s stuff and Ernestine has that depressing, rubber tired young woman with a bumpy forehead and Thurley the Quinby monstrosity. I’m terribly behind. Please, help a chap out. It’s proper for you to be my secretary since no one can accuse us of being in love—I’ll leave you carte blanche and the key to Parva Sed Apta; you can tidy me up like a good elf, answer notes and even wash my paint brushes.” There was something gentle and generous in Collin’s joyous eyes as he watched her struggle not to accept.

“I’d be slacking from what I’ve set out to do,” she said finally. “This war may rob us of our future composers abroad and it’s my time to take their place. I study every night, Collin, no matter how I’ve been working and I’ve made plans for the summer.”

“Study at Parva Sed Apta!”

She shook her head. “I’d rather not. Maybe I’ll have to come to it some time, be an out and out dependent, perhaps—”

Collin put his hand down to cover her small, brownish ones. “Why, Polly, you mustn’t go getting morbid. It’s that damned fire escape and attic of yours and the hungry wolves howling outside your door every time you’ve a crumb to spare. Come along into the sunshine—and filled pantry shelves. Play I’m big brother to a little bohemian.”

They were standing for the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and Polly, glad of the release, sprang to her feet and lustily sang the words. But she persisted in her refusal and Collin, a little displeased, told Caleb before he left town to keep a weather eye on Polly and, if she started absurd things like fainting, to kidnap her and take her to Parva Sed Apta where she could protest in helpless but very comfortable surroundings!

Collin did not in the least understand, despite his ability to read his subjects in banal, neutral fashion and to see the inner meanings. He was blind to Polly’s tragedy, one of the most cruel of tragedies in the world—unreturned yet undying love.

In fact Collin was becoming used to his subjects’ asking that special skill be used in the painting of the lace wedding veil or accurate copying of the gold braided uniform of an army officer—so that popular marionettes were the result, when all the time it was with difficulty that his joyous eyes did not see far beneath the lace veil or the uniform and paint the obscure truths be they ugly or beautiful!

Calling on Thurley a week after the garden fÊte to urge her appearance at a Newport carnival, Caleb was amazed to find her apartment shrouded in gray linen and even the mirrors tied with gauze. Hortense, in the pleasant rÔle of a stay-behind martyr, received him to tell the news. Thurley had returned to Birge’s Corners—the Fincherie was the name of Miss Clergy’s house—to spend the summer!

“All at once she demanded the old environment, a strange homesickness engulfed her,” Hortense began analytically, delighted to have Caleb at her mercy. “I cannot say whether or not it is wise—but home she has gone. Although she left plenty to do,” she could not refrain from adding, “but, even so, it will be lonesome for me.”

At which Caleb fled, threatening punishment to Thurley for having run him into danger. Later, he received a note stating that Thurley was at the Fincherie and she would have a house party in August, to save the time out for that because she was sure he would find plenty of new types.

“I’ll be hanged,” Caleb ruminated over the situation before he wrote Ernestine the news. “But didn’t Thurley leave a boy-sweetheart in Birge’s Corners?”