“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.” 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