Caleb met her as was customary, although all she said by way of a welcome was,
“I’ve had a fright of a time. Europe is seething like a witches’ caldron. I’m out of my own cigarettes and special kind of hair nets and my fingers feel like sticks. Dalrymple, the best coach I’ve ever had, has rushed to Canada to go into training!”
“You look fagged,” Caleb admitted as he drove her home. “Well, as nearly as I can make out every one has a grouch on. Thurley is beginning to have bad mannerisms; Bliss must take her in hand. Lissa has ruined her with nonsensical notions and Mark dawdles about only to waste her time. You haven’t asked as to myself,” he reminded her childishly.
“I brought you a hand-illumined thing,” she answered.
“Oh, certainly—always remember the servants when returning home. It pays! By Jove, that’s a nice hullo for a chap, to say nothing of having stood for your glooms in Newfoundland—”
“You were listening behind tall vases to get our conversation,” she reproached. “I dare say you’ve a hundred pages’ getaway on a worst-seller.”
Caleb was silent and then, instead of impetuous defense, he said in a dreary tone, “Don’t believe I’ll bother you again, Ernestine. It just ‘riles’ you and discourages me.”
“Oh, do drop in for dominoes; no one else ever lets me win so often,” she returned, a bundle of nerves and womanish imaginings, prepared to enter her apartment and find fault and be adorably generous all in one.
Caleb was right concerning Thurley’s mannerisms. Her first adverse criticism proved a mental stab at which she recoiled with agonizing and amusing self-excuses.
“Miss Precore has adopted an unpleasant habit of swaying her body when her voice ascends the scale. Hitherto one of the greatest delights of this young artist was the splendid simplicity which charmed every one who heard and saw her. Not for an instant did she forget the great essentials of musical art—to conceal art itself. She was as unconscious of the audience or the opera company as if she were, in truth, the composer’s mental vision when actually writing the title part! It is to be hoped that this habit and the air of self-consciousness may be done away with before either becomes fixed. To lose such an example of artistic triumph as Thurley Precore has demonstrated to us would be irreparable.”