Will you ever come back to us, Thurley, tell me if you go to church and have they asked you to sing in meeting? How is Miss Clergy, does she ever talk about that Eyetalian fellow?
We are well and Hopeful and me get along so well in this house except that it seems pretty big and that it ain’t right to take charity. Ali Baba misses you, he says he will send a box of apples when he gets the ones he wants for you. Thank you for the dress and coat, they are too fine for my old self. God bless Thurley Precore,
The driver was opening the door for Thurley to leave the cab. After a moment she handed him a bill, threading her way through the crowd until she reached the studio building. She wondered if Hobart would notice her manner and comment on it; if she could manage to get through her lesson without breaking down. Dan and Lorraine engaged—with her ring—and it would be Lorraine’s house with the sun parlor that Thurley once planned and the big living room (right across the front of the house, Danny boy, and a fireplace big enough for two Santa Clauses); Lorraine would revel in the garden pergola and plan the sun dial—oh, it hurt, _it hurt_—she was a miserable, jealous coward!
How dared Lorraine take her Dan, pale-faced, scheming little creature willing to be a doormat for some one who did not love her! As Thurley entered the elevator, the thought stimulated her in dangerous fashion.... Even yet, if she were to return to Birge’s Corners and say to Dan, “I am sorry—love me, darling,” he would fling discretion and Lorraine to the winds and all would be as it once had been.... Well, she might do it ... after she was famous ... it would have twice the sting and double the triumph.... He would have had time to regret.... She did not love Dan as dearly as she loved love itself, he being the ardent agent of the great force. She wondered if she could love fame as much. She had a flash of realization of what a broken heart such as Miss Clergy’s must have been. Miss Clergy had no talent. Love had been her all.
Hobart was playing a new song as she came into the room. He did not pause to greet her but said, after a moment, looking into a mirror over the piano in which he could see her quite distinctly, “What is wrong? Only a tight slipper? Take off that ridiculous bonnet and come here! I want you to try this—” It was such a jarring contrast, with that wonderful element of sustained and hidden force which such men as Hobart need in order to conquer genius, that Thurley felt the past, of Birge’s Corners and its petty woes and happenings, fade as if some one had painted it out with a mighty brush.