Half the night Thurley searched among her possessions, finding and destroying notes from admirers, Dan’s boyish, imploring letters, her own childish diary she had kept the first year in New York, Bliss Hobart’s few mementoes—the crayon sketches Collin had made of her abroad, Ernestine’s letters. She reread her press clipping book, her expense accounts, personal memoranda; she added and deducted figures as if she were a scientific accountant. Then she walked into her clothes room and looked at all the lovely, rainbow things of becoming richness; she opened her jewel case and stared at the glittering bits of beauty within. It was as though she were taking a complete inventory of one Thurley Precore, prima donna. She undressed herself slowly, never taking her eyes from her image in the glass, plaiting the brown hair into two braids, each as thick as her own arm. Then she rose and quoted quickly the master’s telling command, “Be sincere—no matter what you may believe,” adding, “so that’s decided—no matter what comes,” startled at the insolent assurance of her eyes. If one could have seen her face as she slept one would have noticed foremost of all that a permanent sneer seemed painted on the scarlet lips. CHAPTER XXIX Whatever Lorraine thought concerning Dan’s frequent absences and his attitude regarding his home and what happened therein, she still followed the path of the Victorian era and kept her own counsel. Nor did any one try to disturb her gentle self by the agony of doubts. For one reason the “genteel grafters,” such as Cora, Hazel, Josie and Owen of the art shoppe fame, came to Lorraine’s home only for what advantages could be obtained. Why then disturb her who gave them the advantages? There might be an end of them if they did. To be sure they gossiped among themselves and the societies and lodges with vivid imagination and a generous manner of embellishing a truly innocent but unique situation—a high-minded, spirited man too high for his town yet too undisciplined for the city who haunted the footsteps of a high-minded, spirited woman who had become big enough in abilities for the entire world and who was dying inwardly of ennui and heart-lonesomeness, who took this mild sort of affair as the one genuine and refreshing thing in her hurried, _de luxe_ existence. Neither of these young people realized the harm it incurred. They cheated themselves into believing it “merely palship” or “an expression of individuality”—a very nice sort of garden and not wild oats affair!