She looked at the handkerchiefs she had for Polly Harris—but Polly would probably make some sarcastic squib at their expense and never be seen with one protruding from her smock pocket. No, the handkerchiefs would do for the social secretary and the antique leather box for Caleb she would press upon the gymnast, while the book on art originally intended for Collin would be relegated to the scrap heap! Thurley laughed aloud as she thought of giving Collin a book on art—when Collin, foremost portrait painter in America, had written a book on art which was used as an authority by the younger school ... well, it had not been so very long since she had bought her gifts at Dan’s store with Dan refusing her money and had done them up in white tissue and the reddest of red ribbon, flying about like a good fairy on Christmas Eve to leave them at doorsteps! After re-reading Ernestine’s note, Thurley came to the conclusion that Christmas was not for those afflicted with exaggerated ego but merely for those who held good jobs. She had bought no present for Sam Sparling or Mark Wirth, the latter still abroad, and as for Bliss Hobart, her fingers fearfully touched the carved idol—a metal Buddha mounted on teakwood. Why she had selected it, after endless excursions to endless shops, Thurley did not know—perhaps it was because she had never seen one in his office where there was everything else under the sun from a Filipino kris to a bibelot which had belonged to Marie Antoinette. Or perhaps there was another reason—at any rate, she had recklessly bought the idol and sacrificed her spending money for a month to come, blushing furiously each time she planned what to write on the accompanying card. She could hardly give the Buddha to a bellboy and she had purchased black gloves for Miss Clergy, the presents for Betsey, Ali Baba and Hopeful being on their way. She pushed the Buddha back in the drawer and went to her lesson with Hobart with a reserved, patronizing manner which amused him and his amusement, in turn, angered Thurley. Fame seemed something which would strangle everything commonplace and joyous, Thurley thought, as she mechanically did her exercises. These persons were so _ultra_, so fond of “_my_ taste in dress”—“the way I eat _my_ artichokes”—“the sort of wall paper in _my_ studio”—so over developed and emphasized that they made clever, well bred fun of the “pastoral joys,” as Ernestine named them, all the while amusingly unconscious of the whine of conceit which crept into their voices whenever they made a drastic statement.