Hobart rose from the piano and came to put his firm hands on her shoulders. “Genius has as many symptoms as measles,” he said abruptly. “I’m afraid you’ve every last one of them!” “You mean,” she said, tense as an unsprung trap, “that it is going to be worth while?” Things were black and queerly shaped to her eyes, due to annoying tears. She thought Hobart’s face a dozen cynical, smiling faces peeping at her from all sides. “Is it worth while, if I work very, very hard?” “Thurley (almost Hoskins) Precore,” it was as if he pronounced a decree, “for us to stand here and exchange the compliments and promises and superlative statements we are both thinking would be as annoying as women haggling over which shall pay the cabfare! We could drag all manner of red herring over the course and merely waste smart sentences which are in demand for after-dinner speeches. But if you work as I tell you and do not become personal either in your relationship with me or your other musical associates—it isn’t as hard-hearted as it sounds—and if this presuming young rustic from Birge’s Backyard stays in the offing—well—you’ll make your début in about a year!” Thurley did not answer. “If you are going to faint,” he continued nonchalantly, “the settle is well-cushioned and handy. I had to have one put in here, for they would go down in absurd little lumps all about the room—sometimes with joy, more often rage! I see you are not going to faint, so please sing something else—something to show up the bad spots. _Marguerite_ is rather full of deceptive curlycues—ah, I know—hymns—yes, real old-time gospel hymns! Then we’ll do more exercises, because fright has taken wings.” He played half a dozen hymns, all of which she sang without hesitation, laughing down at him between stanzas. She could not understand her attitude towards this baffling, fearsome person, young-old or old-young whichever he might prove to be. She found herself wondering if she would ever meet Ernestine Christian and Collin Hedley and Caleb Patmore, or if being impersonal was to exclude them as well as Hobart....