After a busy but personally unsatisfactory winter, the war clouds for America gathering without pause, Thurley admitted to Ernestine that she now understood the need for nerve specialists, that she agreed fully with him who has said, “a state of emotion without some action as an outlet is immoral,” and she proceeded to drink more black coffee and light wine than was good for her, jeopardize her eyes by midnight reading of morbid Russian novels and to carry on half a dozen affairs with Mark as a sort of everlasting threat in Lissa’s direction. Yet in her work Thurley had increased in ability and interpretation; her Juliet, Ophelia and La Tosca were each welcomed as superb achievements.

“Because, my child, you are burning up your personal habits and tastes and nice Jersey cow nerves,” Ernestine said with delicious melancholy. “I knew it was inevitable—you could never stay the rosy-cheeked schoolgirl. You’ll keep on using up your personal endowments. Fame is a cruel stepmother to personal happiness and you’ll be like the rest of us—quite impossible except when you are before the public.”

At which decree Thurley fled to engage in a rousing afternoon of ice skating with Mark, only to have Lissa dart down on them with her purring, dangerous smile and rescue Mark. She then sent him on an errand and drove Thurley home in order to bestow a few feminine scratches.

“I’m quite shocked, dearie,” Lissa began as they bowled through the park, “to think you’d take up with the country bumpkin—really, with your career and looks and the way you’ve been keeping your hand in with Mark—” a bit of a pause here—“it seems to me you ought to play for bigger stakes than that funny storekeeper from Birge’s Corners ... aha, you are blushing! I’m glad you admit guilt. All well enough when you lived in that queer place and he was the richest man in it. It is always well enough when one knows the richest man, no matter how queer the place! But now, Thurley, with the desirables you could—”

“Dan is an old friend—nothing more,” Thurley defended.

“Then keep your sentiment in check until you go back to that queer place, for you’ve let him come to town to see you—twice that I know about.” Lissa’s eyes danced with delight.

“He comes to buy things for his store.” Thurley was strangely alarmed at the secret being discovered.

“Does it mean he must see you? I suppose, poor lad, he spends half his profits on you. What sort of a bonnet will his wife have for spring? Oh, Thurley, if only Bliss and Ernestine hadn’t tried to make you a nun and an opera singer at once—wrong—all wrong as can be.”

Thurley felt it was her turn to scratch. “Anyway, Lissa, Dan is harmless; he’s only a shopkeeper and I’m not stopping his career.”

“You allude to Mark?” this with dangerous sweetness.

“Of course, you make him a mediocre dancer when he’s the ability to be something fine and big—I don’t know what, but I’m saying it is wrong for him to merely dance and if you’d prod him the other way, I’m sure he’d go. Besides, there’s no way out for you two, is there? I can’t imagine your marrying any one and it isn’t fair to Mark—he’ll be dry rot before he knows it.”

“I married a mild person a long time ago; he let me gain my freedom in my own way—it is more satisfactory to be Madame Dagmar than plain Miss. I advise a marriage for the sole reason that the world always takes more interest in you; they are determined to find out what made the marriage go awry. When critics begin to harpoon, Thurley, get married, be divorced and you’ll find a sympathetic welcome from the public.” She lifted her gold chain with its dangling pencils, rouge boxes, tiny brandy flasks and other trifles, swinging it back and forth with a clinking sound.

“But Mark—is so young—”

“And I am so old? What an amiable little girl it is! I can stay young as long as youth loves me.” She seemed a wicked person hiding under a girl’s mask. “Don’t worry about Mark—unless you happen to be in love with him.”

When Thurley came home that afternoon, she found a basket of flowers from Dan and a note saying he would be in New York before June. Trips to New York were not ordinary, easily managed affairs for Dan. He must plan to be away without being suspected. Then he would come to town and stay at a hotel, restless, eager and thoroughly ashamed if he would but admit it, until Thurley permitted him to see her, drove with him, entertained him at her apartment, treating him in a half patronizing, half genuine manner—not quite clear herself either as to her motives or emotions. It was as impossible to think of an actual intrigue with Dan Birge as to associate schoolboys in the lower forms with being regular brigands. True, they play at it—it is often their pet pastime—but there is a prompt ending of it when the supper bell rings, wooden swords and false faces are willingly left in the woodshed and plain Tommies and Jacks cluster around the table!

So it was with Dan. Thurley, talking to him of this or that, of anything save the things she would have liked to talk of, now scolding him, threatening to send him home, playing now that she was annoyed, now that she was sentimental, now pensive or even angry,—Thurley was doing a simple and a natural thing, proof of what Ernestine had prophesied. Thurley was using Dan as her whipping boy, outlet for her repressed and lonely self. Dan was the ooze, some one human to whom she could vent her whims and moods; some one wholesome and clean-minded with whom she was entirely at ease. She selfishly refused to think of the apparent indiscretion, the lack of honor which she incurred when she let him come from the Corners to stay in New York a week while she showed him her restless woman’s self, and let his own man’s heart learn to want her in new, dangerous fashion.

Yet Dan was “playing” too. After all, Lorraine was his wife and he had grown fond of her—used to her would be more truthful and less romantic. She was “mighty good to have about.” It was a relief to return from New York with memories of Thurley as the great opera singer, aloof, coquettish, temperamental, useless save for her own work, and find the sunny little home with Lorraine who never questioned his absence nor shirked in her tasks. And if the tapestry furniture, Queen Anne walnut and mahogany pedestals with plaster statues got on Dan’s nerves when he recalled Thurley’s strangely beautiful apartment, and Lorraine’s dowdy frocks made him visualize Thurley in some wonderful swirl of satin and lace—Dan realized that a man may be happily married and yet partly in love with some one else at the same time. After this realization, he re-ordered his life to fit the situation and his generosity to Lorraine, like his manner, was dangerously kind and thoughtful. The town, which would never exhaust Thurley’s return as a topic for debate, said, fooling its narrow little self, “I guess Dan is sorry for how he acted!”

Sometimes Thurley wondered if Bliss Hobart knew of Dan’s visits. Once she was determined to make him speak to her about something save her voice and decided to tell him, but he forestalled her by saying that the “songbirds” were giving him an album as a present and although he did not care which picture most of them selected for his gift, he had an idea he wanted Thurley as her own self and not in any costume rÔle—did she mind?

They were in his office when he made the request, Bliss sitting at his desk, as he had been sitting the first time she had seen him, his fingers touching the little mascot she had shyly presented that initial and wretched Christmas.

“Of course not,”—knowing she blushed unbecomingly. “What sort of a ‘myself’ picture will your majesty have?”

“Oh, just Thurley—when you blush do you know you leave the rouge boundaries far behind? Please don’t do your hair like oyster shells—Lissa is the only person sufficiently vulgar to do so—and wear a close fitting white turban besides!”

Emboldened by his request Thurley ventured further, “What makes you order me about so? Am I always to be a novice in your eyes?”

“I like to remember you as you were that first Christmas. I do think, Thurley, Christmas is the only time I ever allow myself to be sentimental. Remember how you looked in your blue serge, bright red coat with silver buttons and an ermine tam tumbling off your head—a splendid, real thing you were.”

“I’ve a picture taken then,” she said softly.

“Say it is mine and I’ll tell you a secret—the greatest sculptor in the world is to be my guest very shortly. He is here from his native land, Alsace-Lorraine, to gather funds. He will speak to us because I’m going to give him a party and at the same time Collin will have the surprise of his life!”

“Not going to be married?”

“You women! Worse luck. I say—his picture, ‘Cupid and the Peacock,’ has been given the French medal—and the master will announce it to him.”

“I’ll send the picture up to-morrow,” Thurley promised.

Hobart’s eyes were twinkling and tender all in one. “Well, well, I’m more important than the great sculptor or Collin’s success! Thurley, you are becoming dangerous! Some day we shall have a great reckoning, you and I,” and before she could tell him of Dan he had bustled her out of the room, teasing her until she wished she had refused him a photograph of her own self.

When Thurley sat at Hobart’s supper-table to listen to the old master speak of Collin’s brilliant but heartless picture, as he aptly described it, and then a little of his treasure trove of art knowledge, as she saw his stooped and wasted body wrapped humorously in a gay shawl despite social custom, his face dark and dotted with bumps and wrinkles as a New England field is with granite boulders, wild white hair like white flames leaping from his skull ... she missed the beauty and the wisdom of his words. Instead, her young and attractive self recoiled from the physical appearance of this genius—the price the master paid in order to concentrate, shut out the things of romance, everyday diversion. As she looked at the faces so intent on the great man’s words—words like a benediction, it seemed, for he knew his days were numbered—it seemed to Thurley she saw naught but distorted, repressed or self-indulged expressions and she must rise and leave the room, go into the world a young, untalented girl doing some senseless, regular thing and let those who should love her for her own self speak out and prove their worth; that this drowsy hum about fame and genius was nothing but a sedative the unloved adopt to still the ache. She did not want to sing better than any one else, better than Jenny Lind, so the world told her, she wanted to sing poorly—and have one man say, “I love you—”

Her hands clenched together under the cobwebby tablecloth, as she realized that she had pledged to remain aloof from such possibilities and, by so doing, she had met the man whom she would always love ... she wondered if she had betrayed her lack of interest in the master. He was saying slowly,

“The two great influences helping me to attain my mark were, first, my mother was my friend; then, when middle age waned and inspiration seemed to have taken flight, I heard Bliss Hobart sing, and so I went on.” He was droning now over some technical thing but Thurley kept hearing the words, “I heard Bliss Hobart sing,” and with redoubled determination she promised herself to rouse the man in him to speak to her, to give her fresh inspiration, new courage—to go on alone.

“Everything is symbol,” the master was concluding, “and there must be unity about all artists no matter how disconnected and illogical they may appear on the surface. The artist must not trust anything but his eyes, for they shall see the inner truth of whatever he is choosing to depict. Ugliness to the vulgar becomes beauty to the artist, for he sees the inner meaning of it and knows that by portraying it faithfully he can destroy it. Take the picture, statue, word description or acted part of the drunkard, prostitute, the fool, the pervert—do they not cause the sane yet inartistic person to turn away in horror, resolved a thousand times more strongly to live right?”

... Here Thurley’s mind wandered back to the old man’s confession, “I heard Bliss Hobart sing,” and she was lost in reverie until she caught again the master’s earnest voice as he advised all young artists to see statuary by lamplight in order to find the ivory shades of light and dark shadows that daytime never reveals, not to put more color in the sunrise than did Dame Nature nor carmine on young lips nor fat greens in the summer foliage.

“For then,” he said, smiling wisely, “you cease to be artists, but become dreamy and conceited liars! Be sincere; no matter what you may believe, be sincere.” After which he sat down as confused as a schoolboy, protesting against the applause, admitting in an undertone to Ernestine Christian that “America was too wonderful, her food too sophisticated, her women too daring.” Then Lissa tried to attack him from the other side with some silly question which caused the old man to lapse into his Alsatian jargon,

“TÈ, Matame, je ne sais pas—”

Thurley left the party early; Caleb told her afterwards that Bliss was disappointed for he wanted the master to hear her sing. She took a delight in having cheated him of the request. She went to her bedroom to rummage among her belongings until she found an overposed stage picture of herself as Violette in “Traviata” and she inscribed it to Bliss Hobart, sealing it in an envelope and marking it, “For the album—could not find the other.”

She said her dutiful good night to Miss Clergy, looking with magnanimous pity at the frail ghost lady who patted her white, ringed hand and said as she had done so many hundreds of times,

“How lovely you are, Thurley—and how proud I am! You have never given me any anxiety—not for a moment.... What a girl you are and what a joy it has been!”

To-night, Thurley lingered a moment longer than usual. “Do you think I shall never love?” she asked nervously.

Miss Clergy sat up in bed, clutching her cashmere shawl in excitement. “Love a man?” she asked breathlessly. “Oh, my child, it would only bring harm!”

Thurley soothed her as if she were a child. “I won’t break my promise—not even after I repay you—and I’ll never repay you if I keep on buying pretties, will I? What an extravagant goose I’m getting to be, vying with every one else for the brightest trifles!” She was talking more to herself.

Miss Clergy misunderstood her meaning. “Never repay me, Thurley! What do I want with money? All I have will be yours, now do you understand? All I have!” she whispered hoarsely.

“Go to sleep, there’s a dear,” Thurley said swiftly, “and when you watch my flirtations, remember they are only to make the stage loves the more real.” Turning off the light she left the ghost lady to her haunted memories.

Half the night Thurley searched among her possessions, finding and destroying notes from admirers, Dan’s boyish, imploring letters, her own childish diary she had kept the first year in New York, Bliss Hobart’s few mementoes—the crayon sketches Collin had made of her abroad, Ernestine’s letters. She reread her press clipping book, her expense accounts, personal memoranda; she added and deducted figures as if she were a scientific accountant. Then she walked into her clothes room and looked at all the lovely, rainbow things of becoming richness; she opened her jewel case and stared at the glittering bits of beauty within. It was as though she were taking a complete inventory of one Thurley Precore, prima donna.

She undressed herself slowly, never taking her eyes from her image in the glass, plaiting the brown hair into two braids, each as thick as her own arm. Then she rose and quoted quickly the master’s telling command,

“Be sincere—no matter what you may believe,” adding, “so that’s decided—no matter what comes,” startled at the insolent assurance of her eyes. If one could have seen her face as she slept one would have noticed foremost of all that a permanent sneer seemed painted on the scarlet lips.