ush cape.
Thea had bought this cape at a big department store and had paid $16.50
for it. As she had never paid more than ten dollars for a coat before,
that seemed to her a large price. It was very heavy and not very warm,
ornamented with a showy pattern in black disks, and trimmed around the
collar and the edges with some kind of black wool that "crocked" badly
in snow or rain. It was lined with a cotton stuff called "farmer's
satin." Mrs. Harsanyi was one woman in a thousand. As she lifted this
cape from Thea's shoulders and laid it on her white bed, she wished that
her husband did not have to charge pupils like this one for their
lessons. Thea wore her Moonstone party dress, white organdie, made with
a "V" neck and elbow sleeves, and a blue sash. She looked very pretty in
it, and around her throat she had a string of pink coral and tiny white
shells that Ray once brought her from Los Angeles. Mrs. Harsanyi noticed
that she wore high heavy shoes which needed blacking. The choir in Mr.
Larsen's church stood behind a railing, so Thea did not pay much
attention to her shoes.

"You have nothing to do to your hair," Mrs. Harsanyi said kindly, as
Thea turned to the mirror. "However it happens to lie, it's always
pretty. I admire it as much as Tanya does."

Thea glanced awkwardly away from her and looked stern, but Mrs. Harsanyi
knew that she was pleased. They went into the living-room, behind the
studio, where the two children were playing on the big rug before the
coal grate. Andor, the boy, was six, a sturdy, handsome child, and the
little girl was four. She came tripping to meet Thea, looking like a
little doll in her white net dress--her mother made all her clothes.
Thea picked her up and hugged her. Mrs. Harsanyi excused herself and
went to the dining-room. She kept only one maid and did a good deal of
the housework herself, besides cooking her husband's favorite dishes for
him. She was still under thirty, a slender, graceful woman, gracious,
intelligent, and capable. She adapted herself to circumstances with a
well-bred ease which solved many of her husband's difficulties, and kept
him, as he said, from feeling cheap and down at the heel. No musician
ever had a better wife. Unfortunately her beauty was of a very frail and
impressionable kind, and she was beginning to lose it. Her face was too
thin now, and there were often dark circles under her eyes.

Left alone with the children, Thea sat down on Tanya's little c