No one mentioned the criticism to Thurley—there was no need to do so. Two days after it was printed and her manager told her she must go on a concert tour in February, Thurley dressed herself deliberately in a gown as gleamingly white and glitteringly silver as a path of moonlight; it fairly clothed her in romance. She tied green tulle about her hair and, taking a cloak of emerald green velours, she drove to Bliss Hobart’s apartment, having had Hortense first ’phone to ask if he would be at home.
During the drive she planned what she should say with the artifice of a world coquette. Thurley had fallen prey to Lissa’s spell, yet she had, being denied the simple ties of acknowledged relationships, found scant solace in the bizarre theories of a small but powerful portion of the world. She had told herself with the recklessness of youth that she was different from others, therefore she had the right to live in different fashion, to love in different fashion if she chose ... she would not stay a convent sort of celebrity with every one adoring and applauding and copying her in every way imaginable yet no one becoming happily related to her. She regarded Ernestine as a remote, though precious, older sister who had made a bad error in becoming so aloof; she wanted Collin to marry Polly Harris in the good old-fashioned way, since Polly had no more chance of writing successful opera than the fire escape of her attic of turning into a marble stairway. She was undecided as to Caleb’s destiny. Lissa was interesting, even with her jealousies and vanities, her greed for all material things—Thurley suddenly realized that Lissa was interesting because she never corrected one, she never proved the wrong of this or the right of that—and who, not excepting rosy youth, does not incline to him who never reproves but merely condones? Mark did not really interest Thurley, since she had ceased trying to deny the truth to herself—that she loved Bliss Hobart in such tense fashion that she thought of him as her inspiration in whatsoever she did! The only solace she had when Hobart busied himself with new pupils, going here and there to decide this or that question, or when society women flocked about to try their best to fascinate, was that he treated the entire world with the same indifference and kindly patronage and, if Thurley still hoped through magical power to waken in him romantic love, she had sense enough to keep her secret well hidden—from herself most of the time—in order that she might do her work and stay within his jurisdiction.
She found Hobart and Caleb Patmore playing chess, a favorite recreation of the former’s.
“I’m quite a gamester,” Caleb said, with visible relief as she appeared. “Ernestine lapses into childhood via dominoes and Collin actually stops painting to drag me into casino—casino, Thurley! Why do you not stroke my brow or show some symptom of humanity? Polly Harris yearns for cribbage; you know Polly still hints of that ancestry of hers where she had school marms for aunts and judges for uncles and her cousins all went to military academies. Why this odd devil takes to chess for his pleasure—I understand it not. Help, ho, Thurley, take my place—will you?”
Thurley hesitated. It was not to her liking nor her intention to have any one present at her visit, but she dallied the question gracefully, submitting a list of songs for the concert tour and pretending grave anxiety as to the recovery of one of the songbirds recently in a motor accident.
As she rose to go, inventing a dinner engagement, Hobart accompanied her into the reception hall, leaving Caleb straddled on the fire-settle wondering—who knows what?
“What did you really want?” Hobart asked, as she paused before the door. “Don’t tell me you’re going to do Red Cross work and wear a uniform—”
“It’s the criticism,” she said simply. “It hurt—you might have warned me when you saw my faults.”
“I warned you not to waste summers,” he reminded. “I said all I could. You are no longer my pupil and I have other things which take my time.”
“What shall I do?” she demanded petulantly. “I will not be a mere shooting-star person as so many would like to see me—”