a lived in so many places that sometimes at night
when she left Bowers's studio and emerged into the street she had to
stop and think for a moment to remember where she was living now and
what was the best way to get there.

When she moved into a new place her eyes challenged the beds, the
carpets, the food, the mistress of the house. The boarding-houses were
wretchedly conducted and Thea's complaints sometimes took an insulting
form. She quarreled with one landlady after another and moved on. When
she moved into a new room, she was almost sure to hate it on sight and
to begin planning to hunt another place before she unpacked her trunk.
She was moody and contemptuous toward her fellow boarders, except toward
the young men, whom she treated with a careless familiarity which they
usually misunderstood. They liked her, however, and when she left the
house after a storm, they helped her to move her things and came to see
her after she got settled in a new place. But she moved so often that
they soon ceased to follow her. They could see no reason for keeping up
with a girl who, under her jocularity, was cold, self-centered, and
unimpressionable. They soon felt that she did not admire them.

Thea used to waken up in the night and wonder why she was so unhappy.
She would have been amazed if she had known how much the people whom she
met in Bowers's studio had to do with her low spirits. She had never
been conscious of those instinctive standards which are called ideals,
and she did not know that she was suffering for them. She often found
herself sneering when she was on a street-car, or when she was brushing
out her hair before her mirror, as some inane remark or too familiar
mannerism flitted across her mind.

She felt no creature kindness, no tolerant good-will for Mrs. Priest or
Jessie Darcey. After one of Jessie Darcey's concerts the glowing press
notices, and the admiring comments that floated about Bowers's studio,
caused Thea bitter unhappiness. It was not the torment of personal
jealousy. She had never thought of herself as even a possible rival of
Miss Darcey. She was a poor music student, and Jessie Darcey was a
popular and petted professional. Mrs. Priest, whatever one held against
her, had a fine, big, showy voice and an impressive presence. She read
indifferently, was inaccurate, and was always putting other people
wrong, but she at least had the material out of which singers can be
made. But people seemed to