Yet the ooze had stimulated Thurley; she could always go slipping back to the Corners to relive the homey things which had made her a wild rose. It appeared to be tremendously comforting and she went a step further in self-analysis, telling herself, as she was going up to the hotel rooms, that the thing which made great people lapse into the ooze for tangled up nerves and snarly frames of mind was the thing which made sarcastic, aloof Ernestine Christian play a gypsy dance with the wild fire its author intended it to have or gave Caleb the power to invent an entirely new setting for the same old, “Will you love me?” or told Collin how to forget the ingrowing chin of his subject and make it strong and masterful still _looking like_ the ingrowing original—here, Thurley took the lesson home for she, too, was crystallizing her personality. It gave Thurley the ability to feel that she was Juliet in the tomb or Rosina having that delightful music lesson with her masquerading lover, it was temperament, psychic masquerading! There, that was a much nicer name than the ooze and when she was famous enough she would tell Bliss Hobart so and make him admit his clumsiness of nomenclature.
After which exhilaration came the hint of a warning—Miss Clergy’s years of uselessness were the result of just such “psychic masquerading” fed by revenge and disappointment. After all, was this ooze merely confined to the great? Would they not have to yield a point and admit they had much in common with their neighbors?
When she came into the apartment sitting-room, she found Polly Harris in her shabby brown trappings and another member of the family whom Polly had dutifully brought to call.
“It’s Sam Sparling,” Polly announced in boyish fashion. “Have you seen by the papers he’s to open here Christmas afternoon? This is Bliss Hobart’s prize,” waving her hand in Thurley’s direction. “Now beware of Sam because even duchesses fall in love with him and he has trunks full of yellowed mash notes—”
Sam interrupted by frowning at Polly and saying, “Come over here, my dear, don’t be afraid. I’m too busy to get up a new affair before New Year’s.”
He had the cultured, pleasant voice of a well-bred Englishman and Thurley could picture his irresistible methods of love-making, although he was far older than she fancied and his mouth framed by ironical furrows. He had really white hair combed into a brisk pompadour, bright eyes like a young pointer’s and he dressed in noticeable fashion, with a fine black and white check suit with exaggerated flares, patent leather boots and silk shirt and tie matching the suit in pattern. Still, it was no wonder Sam Sparling could “get across” with _Romeo_ one day and the next week be giving out an interview in which he was quoted as remembering the day Disraeli said to him—!