“I don’t like Lissa’s trying to bag my game, but you’ll have to go, I suppose, and be done with it. Please don’t absorb any of her silly notions. You’ve been brought up so far as any nice child would be and you are not spoiled. You could be very easily spoiled, Thurley, and a frightful person if you were. Some persons have single- and some multiple-compartment minds. That is why a single-compartment-minded person may have a tragic experience and it proves the end of him, whereas a multiple-compartment-minded person emerges unscathed, to all appearances, only a part of him harmed. The single-compartment-minded person can comprehend but one viewpoint, good or bad, one aim, believe in but one result—if it is good, all is well—if it is bad—disaster, hopeless and lasting. You have forgotten Birge’s Corners too quickly, Thurley, to make me fear you are of the single-compartment variety. But, please, take everything Lissa says with a large punctuation of mental salt and try to wastebasket her entire influence.” Thurley laughed. “What I planned to do, for I do not like her and I do like Mark Wirth. Yet she interests me. Besides, I must know some bad people!” Hobart shook his head. “If only you never need to—heigho, here we go, talking against time—” “Tell me, does Mark Wirth really love her?” Thurley insisted. She had grown to feel more at home with Hobart than she had fancied could occur; even during his abrupt, aloof moments she sensed the gentler part of him as being merely sidetracked for the time being. “Mark,” said Hobart as he sat at the piano, “is a case of the old warning, ‘Vices first abhorred, next endured, last embraced.’ That is why I beg you to make your visits to the Hotel Particular far between and few.” “But sometime he will love some one and then he’ll find himself,” Thurley concluded. “Can he go on dancing attendance on a silly old woman who wants him to sacrifice his art to be a professional ballroom dancer?” “You are here for a singing lesson,” Hobart tried to argue, “but, as you are on the subject, suppose you suggest that thought to Mark, if you ever have a moment alone with him. Don’t tell him if there is a door ajar—unless you look into the next room first. Lissa is the eternal vigilante when it comes to Mark. Bah, it is all bad tasting, let’s sing some ballads to get the very idea out of our heads.” He began, “Hark, hark, the lark” which Thurley sang—and as she sang it to him, she did it exquisitely. As she finished, he asked, “You and Lady Sensible are good pals, are you not?” “You mean Ernestine? Oh, yes, I love her,” Thurley began rapturously, “even when she is at her meanest.”