Flushing as she thought of Lorraine’s chest of linens, the new house which was to cost twenty thousand dollars—and then of Ernestine’s necklace which cost that alone—Thurley, without hesitation, answered, “Why, a cut glass punch bowl with the silver hooks all around it for the little glasses!” “The infant is christened,” Hobart pronounced after the applause ended. “I nominate a shopping committee of Ernestine Christian and Thurley Precore.” During the rest of the supper party Thurley remained a spectator until Hobart whispered that she sing for them and she rose, for the first time in her life, reluctant to obey. “She has not done well,” she heard Hobart saying as she finished, “stage fright—too few of us—too small a room—the opera stage, five thousand people and she would sing as if her throat were copper lined—however—” Polly Harris finished the sentence for him. “However, if Ernestine wisely realizes the limitations of the pianoforte, Thurley Precore will never have to realize the limitations of her voice.” Caleb took Ernestine and Thurley home in his machine, Collin and Polly following in the former’s roadster. Being the infant, Thurley was left at her hotel first of all with fond good nights and quips about the sandman’s speedy arrival! She regretted that she was not allowed to whirl about taking Polly home and then Collin and then Ernestine and, finally, to be left alone with this rich, willful novelist-slacker and have him tell about his world even as Ernestine had hinted of hers. As she undressed, the memories of the evening being rehearsed by her dramatic self and shamedly admitting she had been a stupid country lass who had not sung one-tenth as well as she could, Thurley realized another valuable thing, one which the public does not take the pains to decipher, that artists, in order to be successes, must, _per se_, acquire definite and almost narrow ways and methods of living such as dressing, recreation and so on, _their personalities must crystallize and become impenetrable to the onslaught of the personalities which they will undertake to interpret or create_. Here, in part, lies the secret of fame. Once one has one’s own self quite modelled and secure from invasion, the tortures of creation and interpretation become but the day’s work just as the man with grimy hands polishes the most expensive limousine body and returns homeward via a street car.