Thurley went directly home instead of keeping a luncheon engagement with Ernestine. She wanted to spend the afternoon in remembering all he had said. The greatness of his vision and the new standard for art had not impressed her as much as the moment when he had taken her hands—or told of his false love. Then Miss Clergy’s promise crossed the clearness of her reflection, blurring it badly; Dan’s bucolic letter on her desk marred her thoughts as well—so did the flowers from Mark, the handsome gift book from some one else; a myriad of incidents and engagements came to spoil the reverie. As sacred to her as the vision which had been shared with her, Thurley kept telling herself, “I am of the vanguard ... and I love him ... no other man can tempt me ... I love him, therefore I can live up to his vision and help him ... for he is sadly limited. He merely expresses what some one else must do.... I love him,” and when the charming question hinted itself to her,—“Suppose this man of a great vision and grave purpose, burned clean of youthful tragedy, should love you—what then?”—Thurley admitted that vows were brittle things and that if the circumstances so fell out she would not hesitate to prove the statement.

The next morning when she was writing Hobart a note trying to express something of all she felt towards his vision and his influence, as Dante said of Virgil, “their guide, their master and their friend,” Lissa dropped in for a call.

“Bliss sails at noon for England,” she informed Thurley. “Isn’t it wonderful to be all important, war or no war? They want him to patch them all up with patriotic art—I suppose he’ll come back an earl in spite of himself—”

Whereat Thurley felt as heartbroken as a girl deserted by her bona fide lover, as she tried to chat pleasantly and not betray her disappointment. She entered again the squirrel cage of doubts and subterfuges until she felt as absurd at having seriously considered being one of the vanguard as one who admits having won a husband through a matrimonial agency.

Lissa’s way was quite comfortable—uneasy lies a head which does not wear a becoming hat was the greatest depth of her philosophy!

So Thurley dragged the summer through, wondering why Dan had ceased to write to her, imploring her to return to the Corners or permit him to visit her in New York. In the true sense Thurley was glad Dan had not written, although no woman can ever quite forgive a man whose interest in her ceases. She was piqued, on her mettle to sing her best and disprove Hobart’s flowery vision, as she had told herself it was, to sing so well and live so flippantly that she could say to him with truth, when he returned, “Your vision is impractical,” and when a certain multi-millionaire, a chewing-gum king he was, to make it the more humorous, made love to Thurley and plied her with attentions, Thurley did not hesitate to flirt with him publicly until Sunday newspapers, despite the war, devoted a page of pictures and lurid writing with repeated exclamations about “the young diva whose vow never to marry has not kept her from being soul mate to the chewing-gum king!”

The chewing-gum king was boresome after a little; horse-racing, good wine, pretty women without brains, clothes trees upon which to display his wealth, were the extent of his possibilities. And Thurley, without hesitation, proceeded to pass him over to willing rivals who had watched the apparent progress of the affair with scantily concealed envy.

Miss Clergy had not gone to the mountains but stayed with Thurley, who flitted restlessly from one watering spot to another, appearing at the private affairs for war charities, now and then running into Caleb or Ernestine or Collin who, likewise, seemed to be having a table d’hÔte vacation, a little of everything and none of it satisfying.

Hortense Quinby, again in charge of Thurley’s apartment, and Polly Harris proved the only exciting events in the long holiday. Without warning Hortense left Thurley as suddenly as she had attached herself to the retinue, a desertion which brought Thurley into town to see why this sudden resignation of a now valued member of her staff.

She found Hortense in a khaki uniform with innumerable brass buttons and a mock knapsack across her chest, her restless eyes sparkling with a new eagerness as when she had pleaded to become necessary to some one who was already famous. Hortense was to do land duty in behalf of the French war orphans, only, as she told Thurley forcibly, until America entered the war and overseas duty confronted her. At last she could prove her worth to the world! The land duty in behalf of the orphans, as nearly as Thurley could make out, was to appear publicly as often as possible to solicit subscriptions from all who passed by,—a more exciting form of the occupations of old men to be seen on side streets, a restaurant sign harnessed on both chest and back, announcing the wonders of pot roast and noodles for fifty cents—pie extra.

“But just when you’ve learned to be of such use to me,” Thurley urged, “the way you keep everything going—why, Hortense, weren’t you happy?”

At which Thurley was treated to the initial outburst of Hortense’s emotional spree.

Briefly, it was this: The chance for the great adventure was presenting itself to women whose lives had had neither adventure nor romance. And if romance and adventure had not been theirs, it was their duty as individual souls to create it, woo it, pursue it, anything to obtain some smart and stinging knowledge of the world at large. It was better to wear out than to rust out, this strange, middle-aged rebel said, her long, thin hands fondling the buttons of her toy uniform.

“Ah, but I thought it was for the orphans,” suggested Thurley, who had, unostentatiously, paid for the support of half a dozen of them.

Well, it was the orphans, true enough—but the orphans were a means to an end—there, that was the situation! Being third rail to fame was not satisfactory, it was like leading a hungry man outside a restaurant window wherein are displayed three-inch steaks flanked by asparagus and keeping him there, close to the food it is true, but separated by a window glass which, if he breaks it, means jail!

Being associated with genius had merely whetted her appetite for expression, nor was she alone, she added, all over America were women realizing that the opportunity for self-expression, freedom of speech and action was theirs; they would proceed on the quest for adventure, something to be an everlasting antidote against the drab pattern of their ladylike lives! Few suspected this rebel germ was quickening in the flat, thin chests of conscientious, rubber heeled librarians, middle aged, a trifle unwholesome spinsters like Hortense—but it was true. Whether or not it was milk for French orphans, which was a worthy cause playing into the hands of the restless searchers, a cause was being given them and take it they would!

So Hortense, for the time being, passed from Thurley’s life with Thurley pondering after she had stamped from the room with a ringing, military tread and given Thurley her headquarters address, adding that she would see trench life or commit suicide!

When Thurley sought out Polly to beseech her to come and look after things, particularly now that Thurley was to begin coaching for her new title rÔle in Liszt’s “Saint Elizabeth,” she found Polly giving a party royal in her attic, celebrating being left a small legacy by a maiden aunt. The aunt had also left Polly a letter expressing her opinion that her niece had been nothing if not a fool to have left a good home with a decent furnace for a tenement and a daily diet of macaroni.

As Thurley looked at the hilarious feast, well under way, she laughed in spite of herself and wondered whether or not the aunt’s shade was walking restlessly! For Polly in a new frock as brown as Spanish fish nets on the Santander sands, was pouring out claret with a lavish hand and pressing alligator pear salad and jellied chicken on her nearest guest, the table abundantly strewn with every eatable known to luxury.

“Polly’s pretending her opera has been a success, I do believe,” a more practical guest whispered to Thurley. “She’s determined to burn her money up as fast as she can; she’s loaned us all ten dollars—”

Thurley found Polly quite determined to pay no heed to her aunt’s letter.

“Why should I remember I come of gentle people?” she asked, her brown eyes sparkling naughtily. “I’d rather have one or two glorious parties, treat myself to all the music I want for a season than to go snailing back to Painted Post and live in a cottage completely surrounded by neighbors. I’ve run wild too long, Thurley dear—don’t look so disappointed. Why, you beautiful, lovely thing, what right have you to show me the error of my ways, you with a king’s ransom on your fingers this minute? Yet, Thurley, when I look at you and summon my Scotch second sight to lend me wisdom, you seem fey to me, fated as the Scotch know the world. Shall I tell you your possibilities?”

“It’s the claret,” Thurley insisted. She did not want to talk about herself because she did not seem a struggling, interesting human being like the rest.

“No, it’s not claret but second sight. Bliss knows I have second sight; he’s often asked me for opinions—for everything but my operas,” she added a trifle bitterly. “Now you do seem fey, as if you ought to become a rosy-cheeked matron, the sort that has a big, brick house just packed with young people who all confide in you, and a nice, gentle sort of relatives, linen closets with lavender bags between the snowy piles, jam closets, rooms with old, soft rugs and mellowed furniture, all kinds of books and pictures and nothing so wonderful that art dealers would ever employ burglars to borrow. Just the kind of things that years afterwards would cause your children to say, ‘Oh, that was mother’s—I shall never give it up,’ or ‘Here is her shawl. How she laughed at herself for huddling so eternally in it! Let’s keep it in the cedar chest she had as a bride, she’d like to have it so, I’m certain!’ You understand, Thurley dear, the lovely common things inspired by some one not common! There, that’s quite as smart as Caleb himself could have said it.”

Forgetting her errand and Hortense, Thurley repeated, “It’s the claret, Polly—and you’re quite mad....”

She rushed home to practise scales diligently, remembering with every thump of the keys that she was never to marry—tum-tum-tum, and that Bliss Hobart was a visionary dreamer—tum-tum, art never could be placed on a moral, idealistic basis, never—ti-ti, she had no idea of trying to be one of the vanguard because how useless it would be when one was tied to a ghost lady—tum-tum-ti, that wretched bohemian of a Polly had unsettled her—ti-ti-ti, anyway, Bliss had said he would not consider a vow to a ghost lady as binding—tra-la-la, yet after confiding his great secret, why did he rush off without a good-by, expecting her to do what? Why didn’t he go scold Ernestine or Caleb or Collin, some one besides herself—ta-ta-tum, she finished with a final thump and a superbly clear note which brought Miss Clergy to the door to applaud.

For the first time Thurley turned from her in recoil. She seemed a jailer preventing Polly’s vision from coming true—and what a lovely vision it had been!...

“Thurley, are you ill?” Miss Clergy was asking.

“I’m tired of everything,” she answered, without controlling her temper, “of singing and New York and myself—and you,” like a walli-walli windstorm she swept out of the room, remaining alone until she could laugh off her outburst by a light, humorous explanation of a tight slipper or the alarming story told by the weekly weight on undeniably uniform scales!

When Hobart did return, he was a tired and not easily enlivened man whose summer had been spent overseas planning things calculated to counteract the effects of “military poison ivy,” so he said enigmatically. He met Thurley with seemingly weary interest and a disapproving shake of the head when she tried again to convince him that her way and Lissa’s way was the best—as well as the easiest—and the chewing-gum king only one of a handful of “pet robins!”

Then he looked at her in her sophisticated maze of gold cloth and gave a boyish laugh. “If you told me you were totally depraved, I should only laugh,” he said. “You are trying to fool yourself into thinking yourself a first water adventuress, so how can you expect to fool me? Come, come, what terrific things have you allowed to happen to your voice! We shall have to send you to the nursery to begin again! So Lissa coached you! I knew the voice assassin’s marks of violence.”

He busied himself with getting Thurley’s voice in shape for her opening night. They did not talk again of the vision or Thurley’s snap judgment regarding life. Once Thurley ventured to say he looked tired and he answered that when a man is used to really ‘living’ for three months of the year, to be shunted into another channel tells on his disposition, but he would weather it all right and he was very glad to have been of service.

“I think one of the hardest things in the world,” he added, “is to be the man highest up! To have no one to whom you can go and dump your budget of woes and worries. Sometimes I long for a limited, brainless task, devoid of responsibility, sure of an uninterrupted lunch hour and a sick benefit.”

Wondering over his words, Thurley reached her apartment to find a letter from Dan, hesitating before she opened it to wonder what had made him break the long and unexplained silence. Then she found her answer.

Dan and Lorraine had a son! Dan had written Thurley to tell her he loved his wife as he had never loved any one before—not even Thurley. He had confessed to Lorraine his unloyal, wayward impulses and she had forgiven him. Their joy over Boy was so great that he wanted Thurley to be friends “with the family.” He ended almost naÏvely, he hoped that she would understand and be happy for them all!

So a new, engulfing envy, seconded by Polly’s little prophecy, beset her and during the winter and spring there was but one outcome, Thurley worked as she had never worked before, deaf to pleas about her health, bitter towards her admirers, aloof from Hobart and the others of the family, working without pausing, as if to drown the very whisper of the things nearest her heart.

With the declaration of war came a multitude of surprises and readjustments regarding the family. To Thurley’s surprise her own interest was poised, critical as if the war were past history and not in the making. Miss Clergy was “not interested,” the Civil War had written itself for all time on her ghost heart. Mark was not going, he declared; Collin took the rÔle of a misguided pacifist; Caleb plunged headlong into a war novel, “The Patriotic Burglar,” upon which he was to realize a fortune and retrieve some very asinine losses on the stock exchange. “The Patriotic Burglar” was to be called upon to pay his income tax, and how explain the income of a hundred thousand a year, partly obtained by the theft of Clementine Van Schaick’s pearl necklace! Now Clementine was a little volunteer worker at the income tax office—enter High Ike, the patriotic burglar, they meet—and here romance fairly skidded under the speed of Caleb’s typewriter. No soldier was to be without a copy, commissioned officers would be expected to carry five at least, and that was as far as the war affected him!

Ernestine took the pessimistic view one would have expected of her. The country was going to the dogs, she declared, really mistaking her own intensive selfishness for the failure of the country.

Hobart, who had already been fighting “art battles” abroad, had little time in which to express opinions and Thurley, having word from Hortense Quinby that she expected to sail for overseas shortly, began to reflect on the social readjustment which would result from the needed advertising of charities, loans, what not, since the only logical advertisers and workers would be the hitherto domestic women who would now step beyond the firesides and lift up their voices.

Thurley came to think more concerning Hobart’s vision, the final victory for America in establishing a new morale for permanent art than she did of the need for guns and men, although she generously wrote checks and sang gratis. As for Lissa, she believed in having things to do credit to her patriotism and her complexion simultaneously. A toque of blue poppies, a red tulle veil worn À la odalisque and a besashed and bepleated bit of white scenery for a frock, the American version of Nanette and Rintintin, faithful mascots who saved Paris from the Hun, worn on a silver cord, these completed her opinion of the war and in this outfit, to Thurley’s surprise and amusement, she appeared one warm May day to say languidly,

“Being meatless day, I’ve taken the rat from the cat and am here for a cocktail. There’s a dear! Oh, hum, all my pupils are rushing off to be motor corps girls or kitchen drudges or something like that. When I have to appear enthusiastic and call them all little Joans of Arc, I feel like saying, ‘How can I conserve a cup of mush spilled on the kitchen oil cloth?’ and let them go forth properly shocked to the last bit of braided uniform! What does Bliss say about the opera? I should think with all those horrid German singers sent packing there would be a big opportunity for us home-growns. Bliss has always been obstinate about my appearing. I’m as sure of success as you are.”

Before she left, Thurley understood the part Lissa meant to take in the war—to go overseas apparently to sing for the boys and in reality discover and capture a widower duke for her second husband.

“Why not?” she asked. “I’m sure women have the right to seek their fortune?”

“Not at such a time. They should be sure they are needed before they go across to eat up sugar and beef and wheat—even to take up space. There should be an examining bureau where every one could be proved a hundred per cent needed.”

“Ridiculous! Think of the chance to know titled women. I wouldn’t wonder if I went to London after the war—a few titled patronesses and one is established! Of course you are bound to meet them over there, when they are all scrubbing floors and cooking. It’s so easy to become socially elevated these days! Look at the people right in America who have slaved at the Red Cross rooms to become socially exposed! Oh, I know the majority are self-sacrificing, but the other side is worth a place in history, too.”

After she left and Thurley opened the window to banish Lissa’s heavy and synthetic perfume, she thought of her cold-blooded determination to find a duke, a disabled duke would do if his title was sound, and marry him or become friendly with blue-blooded women of England who welcomed all who came to serve!

To condemn a class is not only useless but ethically a grave error. No one has ever given it credence save fanatics or disgruntled, long-haired socialists. But to argue both sides of the question, giving each fair representation and admit the errors and the virtues of both—that is common sense.

So Thurley sat this May afternoon while the city throbbed with its new turmoil, thinking of many things, all of which related to Hobart’s prophecy—that America must win the violet crown, definite recognition by the Old World that America had established new standards for art, independent of the frayed and tarnished rules which had, in a sense, caused present bloodshed. As a nation’s art progresses, the nation’s virility weakens, so history has proved, Thurley reasoned. When art reached a state of so-called perfection, commercial, physical and religious supremacy of the nation dimmed—because the foundation for that art was not made of common sense rules but fantastic and self-indulgent exceptions. Let the foundation for art be moral even if limited to begin with, inspired by self-sacrifice and with sincerity its determining motif and that nation can advance in art without fear of decadence. She went to the window to close it, looking down at the busy, broad street where strange posters met her gaze, women in uniforms, women stopping pedestrians to beg for the cause, women making speeches, boys screaming out something and waving banners, while echoes of a popular military song floated up to her,—all gay anesthesia for the horror of the war. The great and needed romance of war had taken its clutch on America; reality was left unhampered for the battlefield. That was the great division of the forces. From now on anything tinged with military trimmings would be accepted. Fortunes won by a trifling penwiper made of red, white and blue cheesecloth! An actress however infamous of character and threadbare as to ability would be lauded and her salary tripled when she screeched camp ditties or waved a flag! Pictures with the flag would sell, pictures with soul and peaceful backgrounds would be shoved aside, books such as Caleb’s would flood the market, military diaries would come in droves to the editors’ payroll. For the time being art would be a necessary factor in arousing emotions and sustaining interest. It always had been so, it always must be so at such a crisis.

It occurred to her that if Hobart’s vision could have been realized before this crisis what a mightier, more direct influence true art would have in rousing the commoner. For it would be an art of spiritual sincerity and no one would be forced to discriminate among a myriad of near-art wares and mercenary efforts in patriotic guise. The peasant whose taste for opera and pictures is unsullied until he mingles with the conglomeration which this over-generous nation offers is to be preferred!

And afterwards, Thurley thought,—strangely enough, when peace had come—would the vanguard of art be brave enough to banish forever the surplus wares, false standards and begin anew?—for these swashbuckling profiteers would be loath to cry quits.