She went to a table to find an album, beckoning to Thurley to join her. “See—here and here—and this one—aren’t they as famous as your family? Look at this photo and that autograph, well, what did I tell you? Don’t become lop-sided, Thurley, or change into a crabbed spinster. Live and let love come to you—you are a genius, a super-creature—you have the right to love as you please!”
“You do believe so?” Thurley fairly whispered the words. She fancied she had so stolidly locked away love from her wild-rose heart!
“I know so! The greatest artists have always been exceptions to the rule, never meek slaves of the law.” In a clever, vivacious manner, Lissa proceeded to tell risque stories of this actor and that singer, the pianist who loved and hated all in a month and loved and hated again before another fortnight passed, the artist’s model who became morganatic queen of a small Balkan kingdom and threw aside her rank to join her worthless, gypsy lover, dancers who did so and so, the poet and novelist who had never spoken the word constancy and whose works the humdrum, constant world accepted with reverent unquestioning!
As she stood there in her flaring red velvet gown, the clever lamplight showing the beauty of her hair, perfume addling Thurley’s brain, the purring, soft voice never ceasing and the green eyes smiling fixedly, Thurley began to wonder if it would not be well to be friends with Lissa, despite Hobart and Ernestine, to know the other side of the art world—all its phases and possibilities—for had she not a multiple-compartment mind?
After a little, Lissa drew her to her and they walked to a tête-à-tête and sat there, Lissa drinking absinthe and Thurley hearing more strange, wicked but fascinating things all of which might become realities for herself and still keep the letter of her vow to Abigail Clergy.
“The greater the artist the more unmoral he must be, not immoral, that is for the commoner—but unmoral—morals do not matter. Art is a question of light and shade, ability, press agents—so on. An artist cannot achieve if hampered by petty, binding laws and paltry promises; he must have freedom of thought and action, see—I make no pretense, Thurley, of being a Victorian matron,” she pointed to the rows of photographs all of which were of men.
“I am Lissa Dagmar and society knows and values me because I dare to be what I am. Society sends me its most precious débutantes to take lessons—and some day, you, too, Thurley, will laugh as I do at these fragile ideals the world weaves about us people who do things. The people who have things to do may be nuns and monks and model married couples, but those who do things—wait, wait until you meet your opera associates—où, la-la,” she broke into a French street song ending with an unexpectedly high note which thrilled Thurley’s whole being.
“Oh, Lissa Dagmar,” she said, as fascinated as a country lad with the fair snake charmer, “let me come to see you again—”
Lissa leaned back in contentment. She had thrown the spell as she planned—since she had not forgotten that Thurley had called her Mark Wirth’s aunt! She was telling more of her scheme of things when Mark himself dropped in and was, for once, an unwanted guest.
“I’m awfully glad to see you,” he told Thurley. “Hobart said you would be here—so I came.” He avoided Lissa’s eyes. “He said I must bring you home because he does not like stray cab drivers and he says you’ve no car of your own. I say, Lissa, I’ve got the coast engagement and if I have my company ready by the first of April, we’ll be on our way.”