For Thurley was to meet the Napoleon of grand opera, the master critic and coach, who could make or mar the most talented person in creation—Bliss Hobart, a mysterious, powerful, never-erring judge of one’s abilities, both latent and developed.
Miss Clergy’s solicitors and Miss Clergy’s checkbook skilfully deciphered false lures of singing teachers and alleged powerful agents, and had, at the same time, discovered the nucleus of the New York art world. So Thurley was to make her bow, as it were, to the very public itself at noon to-morrow.
Bliss Hobart was impossible to describe, Thurley concluded. As she first spied him behind his carved teakwood desk, one of a hundred luxuries in his elaborate studio, he appeared a small, insignificant person with an overlarge head betraying the aristocracy of an old race and piercing gray eyes. His hair, a salt and pepper affair with a wild front-lock waving as signal for a controversy, showed the result of a fever, not age, she afterwards learned, and his long, almost grotesque nose and flexible mouth with its deeply-dimpled chin inspired her with a desire to laugh. But as he came across the room to greet Miss Clergy and give Thurley a cheerful nod, she saw that he was as tall as her own self and his shoulders were broad and powerful, while his wonderfully shaped hands championed his abilities. He was dressed more foppishly than she had ever seen a man dress—a blue serge with a corded white waistcoat, an exquisite sapphire pin in the cream satin scarf and a watch chain as slender as a woman’s. As he whisked out his handkerchief characteristically, she discovered it to be of more cobwebby texture than her own.
Facing him, her blue eyes staring in naïve wonderment, Thurley asked herself why she had experienced the illusion of this man’s being a clever dwarf with cruel, calculating eyes! Whatever Bliss Hobart thought of Thurley would have been impossible to state. He seemed more interested in Miss Clergy whose thin face was flushed with excitement and whose small self wore a sheathlike dress of black silk, which suited her well.
For the moment Bliss Hobart seemed a respectful footman solicitous about his mistress’ comfort, as he “fussed” over selecting a chair for Miss Clergy and asked as to draughts. Thurley was left in confusion in the middle of the great room, looking out at Central Park.