When Thurley sat at Hobart’s supper-table to listen to the old master speak of Collin’s brilliant but heartless picture, as he aptly described it, and then a little of his treasure trove of art knowledge, as she saw his stooped and wasted body wrapped humorously in a gay shawl despite social custom, his face dark and dotted with bumps and wrinkles as a New England field is with granite boulders, wild white hair like white flames leaping from his skull ... she missed the beauty and the wisdom of his words. Instead, her young and attractive self recoiled from the physical appearance of this genius—the price the master paid in order to concentrate, shut out the things of romance, everyday diversion. As she looked at the faces so intent on the great man’s words—words like a benediction, it seemed, for he knew his days were numbered—it seemed to Thurley she saw naught but distorted, repressed or self-indulged expressions and she must rise and leave the room, go into the world a young, untalented girl doing some senseless, regular thing and let those who should love her for her own self speak out and prove their worth; that this drowsy hum about fame and genius was nothing but a sedative the unloved adopt to still the ache. She did not want to sing better than any one else, better than Jenny Lind, so the world told her, she wanted to sing poorly—and have one man say, “I love you—” Her hands clenched together under the cobwebby tablecloth, as she realized that she had pledged to remain aloof from such possibilities and, by so doing, she had met the man whom she would always love ... she wondered if she had betrayed her lack of interest in the master. He was saying slowly, “The two great influences helping me to attain my mark were, first, my mother was my friend; then, when middle age waned and inspiration seemed to have taken flight, I heard Bliss Hobart sing, and so I went on.” He was droning now over some technical thing but Thurley kept hearing the words, “I heard Bliss Hobart sing,” and with redoubled determination she promised herself to rouse the man in him to speak to her, to give her fresh inspiration, new courage—to go on alone. “Everything is symbol,” the master was concluding, “and there must be unity about all artists no matter how disconnected and illogical they may appear on the surface. The artist must not trust anything but his eyes, for they shall see the inner truth of whatever he is choosing to depict. Ugliness to the vulgar becomes beauty to the artist, for he sees the inner meaning of it and knows that by portraying it faithfully he can destroy it. Take the picture, statue, word description or acted part of the drunkard, prostitute, the fool, the pervert—do they not cause the sane yet inartistic person to turn away in horror, resolved a thousand times more strongly to live right?”