“London, to superintend some pantomime things and opera. I’ll be back in June but not until you have sailed; we’ll almost be ships passing in the night. But I’ll be here in September to hear you tell of the Old World as seen by two very blue eyes. To-morrow you will please go to Santoza for coaching. You don’t like him and he likes no one save his gnarled old self—he has seen too many women play hob with too many men ever to like the loveliest of beginners. But he will teach you all you need to know and Antone will take you for the singing hour. If Lissa suggests that she coach you, ward her off. Now, my little prodigy, good-by and a happy summer.” Still Thurley did not take his hand. “Where do you go from June until September?” she demanded. Hobart neither glowered nor started as she anticipated. He laughed and patted her shoulder, whispering, “Ah, that would be telling—” Some one tapped at his door and Thurley, perforce, tore herself away. She would not see Bliss Hobart for nearly seven months ... seven months ... then she would make her début! Well, if she could glean from Ernestine bits of her philosophy and from Polly her contagious jollity and add a trifle of Lissa’s purring loveliness—and she became as famous as her own voice could make any one—perhaps even Bliss Hobart might be tempted to say where he disappeared each year! Thurley was planning a startling series of events between herself and Bliss Hobart as she left the building, trying not to let tears crowd her blue eyes or betray she was perturbed.... Santoza, hateful ogre with dirty, yellow hands, absurd, striped clothes and long, greasy hair, always mumbling to himself in Italian—she must study with Santoza and have those yellow, soiled fingers whirl angrily in the air as he tried to explain wherein she was in error and with Antone, that cynical little dandy with no more heart than flint, who stared at her through half-closed lids and only ridiculed, never praised! Then Thurley resolved a dangerous but very feminine thing. Had she but known, many other younger and lovelier women than herself had resolved the same thing regarding Bliss Hobart. She would make him _care_ for her! Not even Miss Clergy’s vow should prove an obstacle. She would make him care ... after that was an undetermined stage of rapture, a new and alluring sort of ooze in which to take refuge after hateful hours with Santoza and Antone and wondering moments as to what Hobart was doing and where he hid for his summer holiday! Thurley would make him care. Having achieved that, she would then employ Lissa’s theories as a vaulting pole to take her well over the handicap which Miss Clergy fancied she had forever placed in the way of romantic love. No woman had yet succeeded. This Thurley did not know; like all the others she was sure that she was to prove the exception.