“Miss Precore,” she began in her tense voice, artificially accented here and there with a dash of pseudo-New York, “I am Hortense Quinby, I live in Greenwich Village, and perhaps I should say I _starve_ in Greenwich Village. I have watched your rise into fame, not with envy but with admiration and respect. You are young, beautiful, talented; you have the world in the palm of your little hand. I do not ask you to be anything unreasonable—but I do implore your help. Let me become essential to you in some capacity—a secretary, a housekeeper, a maid—I hold myself above no office if it concerns the right person. I play accompaniments fairly well—not as well as you would wish for public appearances but for your practice-hour. I am one of those who have failed,” here a deep-seated sigh. “I came from a small town in the middle part of the state about ten years ago; every one thought I had great literary ability as well as musical. But there was no one to help me get across—perhaps when one’s talents are divided one is to be pitied.” She said all this, scarcely pausing. Now she stopped to breathe. “Really, Miss Quinby, I have every one I need,” Thurley said gently. “But I have not,” returned Miss Quinby to her amazement. “Be generous, lovely young thing, be generous to us who have failed. I am not asking for fame—merely to become associated with it.” She held out her hands dramatically. “Do not send me back to be ground down again!” “I don’t need you,” Thurley protested, most perturbed. “I need you. My life cannot be lived as are thousands of women’s lives, bounded by the price of calico and two weeks’ vacation in a lake cottage. I have a soul above pots and pans—a fearless soul, capable of enduring all things to achieve my aim. Let me be your inspiration—you think I could not?” The restless eyes were dangerous and somewhat vindictive. Miss Quinby proceeded to enumerate her abilities and the capacities in which she had served. As nearly as Thurley could understand a comic opera singer stranded in Miss Quinby’s home town had heard her sing and idly encouraged the girl. Some one financed the comic opera singer on to New York and she thought no more of the incident. Not so with Hortense Quinby. From the moment she had been told she had “a voice” and a “future” and “get out of this hole, my dear”—everything in her present scheme of things had been abandoned. She came to New York only to find the opera singer absorbed in her own difficulties and to battle alone with her “voice” and her “future” and her having left “the dreadful hole.”