Dan’s car rounded the driveway of the cemetery, one of those desolate country burial grounds on a remote hill with a neglected wooden fence running about it and wild shrubbery crowding in on the graves. He saw a smart cab in front of the tottering gate. He knew it belonged to but one person—Thurley—and he deliberately halted his machine and crossed the road to read the telling monogram T. P. entwined with fantastic plumes, consolation for having no real ancestors or crest. As he did so, Dan was glad—glad with all his heart!

He climbed the path which was nearest Philena’s grave. He knew Thurley would be beside it.

... She was sitting with her back towards him, lost in her thoughts and unconscious of any one’s being close at hand.

Dan paused. He was trembling—as Lorraine trembled when he had so grudgingly asked her hand in marriage. He knew Thurley had never loved him in the deepest sense—and yet—he seemed to see her as the old wild-rose girl in gingham, waiting for her lover’s coming!

He put his hand to his head as if it pained. Then he came a step in advance. It was hard work to believe this was Thurley. She wore a wonderful silk driving coat which covered an afternoon frock of val lace tied with pink ribbons and a petticoat of pink satin. Her hat, a large, white lace affair, lay beside her, its silver ties half hidden in the grass. Her brown hair was smooth and glossy, betraying endless brushing and care. One hand halfway supported her splendid, tall self—it was very white these days and the nails shone, while a ring of diamonds sparkled up in triumph. Her pink satin slipper toes and the flesh-colored stockings peeked out coquettishly. With a flash of humor Dan spied the tiny anklet watch on its braided, glittering chain. Thurley was very close to the crimson rambler plant which she and Dan planted for Philena on a Memorial Day, long before Thurley had said her reluctant yes!

Here he stepped on a twig whose crackling noise caused Thurley to turn half way and glance up with neither fear nor surprise—nor special delight.

“Why, it’s Dan Birge,” was all she said, raising her hand cordially.

“Do you mind?” His voice sounded weak and far away. “May I sit down? I—I was passing and I saw your cab; I was sure it was yours from the monogram—”

“If you like. How nice to see you again!” She spoke in such deliberate fashion that Dan wondered whether she was pretending. She seemed years older. It was not the rouge nor the sophisticated look in the blue eyes—nothing one could describe, unless one wished to be abstruse and say her soul had aged.

Dan broke the pause by saying lightly, “Odd we should meet here, isn’t it? I was out of town when you came—Lorraine told me about it last night. She asked if she should call—I didn’t know whether or not you’d like to have her.”

“It would be most kind,” Thurley said in the same even voice. “I have been deluged with calls—mostly out of curiosity. Or to see if I would deny having worn some one else’s clothes and having lived in a box-car ... the old car was used for kindling for a poor family, Ali Baba says.”

“I didn’t know about it until it was too late to save it. It hurt when I thought of your old wagon being chopped up.”

“Did it? Sentimental goose,” she managed to laugh at him.

“Were you having a serious ‘think’?” he asked, after a brief silence.

“About Philena—” She plucked some long blades of grass and began plaiting them into a ring. “How well you look! Lorraine takes good care of you, doesn’t she? Does she look as splendidly?”

“Wish she did—you’ll see her, no doubt.”

“If I stay here. I threatened to move this morning. Some old neighbors came in during my practice hour—they don’t understand!”

“What made you come back,” he asked with a flash of the old boy spirit, “when you never even wrote me!”

“Do you think it was yourself?”

“No. I’m quite removed from you in every way. Why, that dress and ring cost more than Lorraine spends in a year! As Ali Baba says, ‘you are a great lady’—for you wouldn’t have come back unless you were,” he added honestly. “It makes us feel shabby and underdone by contrast.... Of course I never hope to be the same to you—you have everything the world can give you for pleasure and attention. I’m not deluding myself. I’m not such a jay as most of the boys—”

“You never were,” she supplemented quickly.

“I always tried to be ‘citified,’ to wake the town up and keep abreast of the times. Anyway, I loved the finest girl the village ever knew.” There was a quiver in his voice. It was like reopening a newly healed wound and letting it bleed a trifle.

“And you married her,” Thurley insisted, the coquette coming to the surface. She tilted her head to look down at him through half closed, purplish eyes.

“I loved her—and I have a splendid wife,” Dan corrected.

“What a lot happens in three years!” Thurley finished the grass ring and stuck it on her engagement finger. “Shall I make one for you?”

“Do! Ought I to be here taking up your time? Perhaps you wanted to get away from every one or you wouldn’t have come.” Dan felt the contrast between them more and more; his clothes seemed poorly fitted and his scarf pin a trifle gaudy, his shoes the fire-sale variety—a country bumpkin beside this adorable, tall girl in the lace and pink satin with distracting, tangly ribbons.

“I like to talk to you, Dan. I wondered how we would meet!”

“What made you come back?” he demanded. “It wasn’t the Corners and I don’t flatter myself it was me ... for you could have written me at any time and I would have come!”

The slim fingers stopped plaiting the grass. “Would you—really?”

He looked at her with despairing eyes. “Did you get any big baskets of orchids and lilies with a card, ‘from an old friend’?”

“Were they from you?” she said sadly. “Oh, Dan, it was too bad you ever had to care for me!”

“Can you stop the birds from singing or the sun from shining—or a fool for loving some one very fine?”

“Why, no,” Thurley looked out at the hills. “That’s always the hardest thing in the world—not the caring for some one but caring for some one who doesn’t care for you!”

Dan reached over to take her hand. “Is it that that brought you here?” he asked tenderly. “Doesn’t some one love you? You needn’t answer. I know ... so fame isn’t enough,” he dropped her hand almost roughly. “Everything’s in the devil of a mess,” he remarked to no one in particular.

Thurley caught the drift of his remark. “It’s the devil of a mess,” she repeated clearly, “because we are not bad enough to be all bad and do terrible things that blot out the hurts or not all good so we can be saints with wings and harps for consolation ... we just struggle—most of us.”

“When did you know I was married?”

“The night of my dÉbut—like a story, isn’t it?”

“And we were there—’Raine and I—on our wedding trip.” After three years’ attempt at bravado, the real heart of him was allowed to suffer, suffer as it should have done three years ago instead of fanning revengeful temper on as a worthless substitute.

Thurley faced him directly, hugging her long legs under her boy fashion. “I’m not worth it. The best part of me is my voice, Dan. Only the worst part of me isn’t content to have it that way. I’ve worked mighty hard since we said good-by—I’ve known all sorts and conditions of people, great and near great, good and bad—I’ve had all sorts of men make love to me and I’ve encouraged all sorts of men—just so far. I’ve done things no one would approve of my doing and some things that only a few could approve of or understand. Mostly though I’ve worked and worked and I’ve decided that it is either work for me all my days if I’m to keep on singing, or else I’ll stop working and love and be loved, perhaps. But the two do not go hand in hand ... perhaps I’m bitter.”

“She made you promise never to marry,” Dan interrupted; “she is a selfish old woman who wasn’t fair!”

Thurley nodded. “Love made her insane,” she defended.

After a moment Dan said, “Sing for me, Thurley, like you used to—when things were different.”

Reaching out her hand, Thurley held his in simple palship as she sang in a hushed voice the old tunes they both had loved. As she finished, he said with an effort,

“Maybe we better not see each other this summer.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m only a small town man with a mighty fine wife and you are a genius coming here to amuse yourself, to make yourself forget some one who doesn’t love you—and that’s not a wise combination! I’m liable to lose my head ... I kept it pretty well after you left.”

“Do you blame me?” She seemed contrite herself. “Were you fair?”

“I suppose not. It was just the choice of two futures—you chose the one intended for you. Only now that you’ve chosen, don’t keep on bruising yourself and every one else by trying to—trying to—”

“Don’t you want to see me?” She was determined to have some one want to see her own self, whether or not she sang a single note.

“Don’t I want to? I’ll always want to.” He came closer to her. “Were you never sorry you went away? It would help a lot to know.”

Closing her eyes and remembering as little of the three years as was possible, nothing of her vow or Lorraine, Thurley gave vent to her starved womanhood. “A little,” she whispered.

“Then I will see you and be your pal,” was his answer. “Let me be just that. No one can say there’s any harm in it—not even ’Raine. I’ll have her call on you, Thurley; that will make it right.” He was very close now, his cheek almost touched her own. She drew away.

“In opera those tenors make love as if you were their own,” he said savagely. “I hated to see it!”

“But you were on your wedding journey,” she reminded.

They both laughed, jangling, noncontagious sounds.

“But, Dan, we’d never have gotten along,” she reminded him. “I’m a creature of whims and moods—spoiled, of course, it was inevitable.” She began telling some of her experiences.

“But you won’t forbid my being just pal,” he urged, as she consulted the anklet watch and found it tea-time.

“Not if you’re content to have it that way,” she promised. “Run along and I’ll follow, it would never do to have us drive off in unison.”

As she stood up her rumpled lace draperies made her seem more like a little girl.

“Thurley, Thurley,” he said in sort of impassioned reverie, “you have come back to me—”

“Only for the summer,” she answered in gay decision. “Oh, Dan, remember I haven’t really found myself, nor shall I, perhaps. So think of me as lightly as you can. My present state of mind would permit of but one motto for over my fireplace,

Lorraine knew Dan had visited with Thurley, so did the village. She wisely kept her counsel and consented to Dan’s stammering request that she call on Thurley—“after all, it might look queer if she did not.”

So she went, as much of a martyr as she had been when she brought Thurley the blue set for an engagement present. This time she passed into the parlors of the old-fashioned house aglow with their pretty trifles and cut flowers, the grand piano in the center like a precocious and not to be ignored child, and met Thurley in timid, dignified manner, taking count of her Parisian costume, her new mannerisms and accent, her rather flippant opinions of the topics of the day, promising her thumping little heart that when she was alone, in the peace of her own house, she would struggle to regain her poise and contentment of mind which this astonishingly charming yet affected person fairly wrested from her!

In fact Birge’s Corners called on Thurley prepared to ask curious and mortifying questions, only to make a hurried exit in quite a different frame of mind. For with a perfectly cordial manner Thurley met all alike. She had a faculty of making them feel their own selves quite impossible; they were ill at ease before her—nor did they ask her to sing, she forestalled that before the subject of the weather was exhausted. They left saying that “Thurley had a way with her—and Dan could thank his lucky star he had been saved from the marriage.” Thurley repaid no calls—not even to Lorraine, although the latter had asked her from a sense of duty. She lived in her own way at the Fincherie with Miss Clergy nodding approval on whatsoever she did or demanded. In a short time, when she flooded the town with what the village dubbed as lunatics, no one was over-keen to have her call.

The “lunatics” were men with bangs, wearing broad scarlet sashes and going without hats in the sun, sketching under white umbrellas and talking “some queer language”; the women had bobbed their hair and possessed more gowns than brains; they slept away half the morning and danced away half the night while Thurley was the gayest of all the strange company, turning the Fincherie lawn into a stage to have tableaux and folk dances, and all her guests, bobbed-haired or banged or what not, scowled at the natives curiously and commented upon them audibly as if they were insensible of understanding.

Dan Birge was seen driving with Thurley, drinking tea on the Fincherie lawn, being a spectator at the entertainments. Lorraine grew more fragile-looking but kept her own counsel and Owen Pringle failed to secure an autograph or an order for a bonnet, while Josie, Cora and Hazel found no encouragement or interest shown in their dramatic, musical or matrimonial futures!

Presently, the Corners said it would be a blessing if Thurley Precore would choose some other place to spend her summers. Whatever made her pa and ma drive into the town in the first place? She would get her “comeupment” for this smartness, to say nothing of a real white slave dance which she gave, at which she was auctioned off to a big fat man with white hair and a tucked, crÊpe de chine shirt, who made his living playing on a little penny whistle! The devil did not have all the good times in the world—neither would Thurley Precore. The older generation had felt from the first it was not boding good luck to have so great a spirit develop suddenly via a partly demented recluse. Here was proof enough! For Thurley and her friends neither went to church nor patronized church social affairs. They lived “like they tell of,” was the report, “just as like to get up at three o’clock in the morning to go on hollerin’ and yellin’ like to wake the dead or else sleep like logs until noon ... and if Miss Clergy thought she had done a smart thing in makin’ so much out of Thurley because Thurley used to be able to carry a tune, she had an awful awakening ahead of her!”

“She’ll never get her married off to no one,” the village further commented, when Thurley in a tight fitting black habit had cantered up and down the streets on a snowy white mare, while a moving picture man from New York patiently lurked along the roadside to catch a few poses. “Dan Birge ought to go down on his knees to thank Lorraine for marryin’ him ... but does he? Oh, no, when he gets down on his knees it’s only to tie up Thurley’s shoe latches! Never mindin’ his business nor his wife’s fadin’—nor the sport they make of him right to his face—he’s a worse fool than they are!”

When the Corners became aware that Thurley’s terrier, Taffy, had several sets of harness and sweaters, they decided it was far more depraved than Dan Birge’s buying a dog and having him ride in the front seat of the car. Following on the heels of this discovery, the terrier had a birthday party with a frosted cake and three candles, and the newspaper editor admitted that they had sent in a paragraph describing the event, fully expecting it would be published. Upon being pressed for the details, the editor said the sum total of the description read,

“Taffy Precore was the proud recipient of many handsome gifts, including a set of white rubbers from Madame Lissa Dagmar and an unusually attractive travelling coat from Collin Hedley. Covers were laid for fourteen and special out-of-town guests were Woofie Airedale, whose guardian is Siri Mantenelli, the opera singer, and Ogre, foster child of Ernestine Christian!”

But even this atrocity was matched—Dan Birge had given Taffy an expensive feed tray and was present at the party. Hazel Mitchell took the day off to circulate the rumor which developed into the report that the tray was not aluminum but Haviland china with a hand-painted monogram in the center! Had Dan been seen kissing Thurley he could not have been more bitterly condemned. Truly, Thurley Precore must get her “comeuppance.”

Ali Baba summarized it one late summer’s day as he watched Caleb, Polly and Thurley play tennis against Collin, returned from Bliss’s hermitage, Mark and Lissa.

“Well, Betsey,” he said, leaning on his lawn-mower handle, “these women covered with lady powder and their dresses cut so low as to leave a fust rate advertisin’ space and these fellers a-whangin’ and a-bangin’ at their fiddles or tryin’ to paint a pretty little blue lake to look like a green icicle and none of ’em mendin’ a sock or drivin’ a nail or carin’ about anything except who can eat the most or laff the loudest, all of ’em thinkin’ ‘what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is my own’—I want to tell you Thurley’s got to get rid of the whole bunch, if she’s goin’ to be worth a pinch of snuff. This way she’ll neither be fish nor flesh nor good red herring!”