fur with a yellow satin rose on it. Her gloves, her shoes, her veil,
somehow made themselves felt. She gave the impression of wearing a cargo
of splendid merchandise.

Mrs. Priest nodded graciously to Thea, coquettishly to Bowers, and asked
him to untie her veil for her. She threw her splendid wrap on a chair,
the yellow lining out. Thea was already at the piano. Mrs. Priest stood
behind her.

"'Rejoice Greatly' first, please. And please don't hurry it in there,"
she put her arm over Thea's shoulder, and indicated the passage by a
sweep of her white glove. She threw out her chest, clasped her hands
over her abdomen, lifted her chin, worked the muscles of her cheeks back
and forth for a moment, and then began with conviction, "Re-jo-oice!
Re-jo-oice!"

Bowers paced the room with his catlike tread. When he checked Mrs.
Priest's vehemence at all, he handled her roughly; poked and hammered
her massive person with cold satisfaction, almost as if he were taking
out a grudge on this splendid creation. Such treatment the imposing lady
did not at all resent. She tried harder and harder, her eyes growing all
the while more lustrous and her lips redder. Thea played on as she was
told, ignoring the singer's struggles.

When she first heard Mrs. Priest sing in church, Thea admired her. Since
she had found out how dull the goodnatured soprano really was, she felt
a deep contempt for her. She felt that Mrs. Priest ought to be reproved
and even punished for her shortcomings; that she ought to be
exposed,--at least to herself,--and not be permitted to live and shine
in happy ignorance of what a poor thing it was she brought across so
radiantly. Thea's cold looks of reproof were lost upon Mrs. Priest;
although the lady did murmur one day when she took Bowers home in her
carriage, "How handsome your afternoon girl would be if she did not have
that unfortunate squint; it gives her that vacant Swede look, like an
animal." That amused Bowers. He liked to watch the germination and
growth of antipathies.

One of the first disappointments Thea had to face when she returned to
Chicago that fall, was the news that the Harsanyis were not coming back.
They had spent the summer in a camp in the Adirondacks and were moving
to New York. An old teacher and friend of Harsanyi's, one of the
best-known piano teachers in New York, was about to retire because of
failing health and had arranged to turn his pupils over to Harsanyi.
Andor was to give