ent
alone. As the train pulled out, she looked back at her mother and father
and Thor. They were calm and cheerful; they did not know, they did not
understand. Something pulled in her--and broke. She cried all the way to
Denver, and that night, in her berth, she kept sobbing and waking
herself. But when the sun rose in the morning, she was far away. It was
all behind her, and she knew that she would never cry like that again.
People live through such pain only once; pain comes again, but it finds
a tougher surface. Thea remembered how she had gone away the first time,
with what confidence in everything, and what pitiful ignorance. Such a
silly! She felt resentful toward that stupid, good-natured child. How
much older she was now, and how much harder! She was going away to
fight, and she was going away forever.

PART III. STUPID FACES

I

So many grinning, stupid faces! Thea was sitting by the window in
Bowers's studio, waiting for him to come back from lunch. On her knee
was the latest number of an illustrated musical journal in which
musicians great and little stridently advertised their wares. Every
afternoon she played accompaniments for people who looked and smiled
like these. She was getting tired of the human countenance.

Thea had been in Chicago for two months. She had a small church position
which partly paid her living expenses, and she paid for her singing
lessons by playing Bowers's accompaniments every afternoon from two
until six. She had been compelled to leave her old friends Mrs. Lorch
and Mrs. Andersen, because the long ride from North Chicago to Bowers's
studio on Michigan Avenue took too much time--an hour in the morning,
and at night, when the cars were crowded, an hour and a half. For the
first month she had clung to her old room, but the bad air in the cars,
at the end of a long day's work, fatigued her greatly and was bad for
her voice. Since she left Mrs. Lorch, she had been staying at a
students' club to which she was introduced by Miss Adler, Bowers's
morning accompanist, an intelligent Jewish girl from Evanston.

Thea took her lesson from Bowers every day from eleven-thirty until
twelve. Then she went out to lunch with an Italian grammar under her
arm, and came back to the studio to begin her work at two. In the
afternoon Bowers coached professionals and taught his advanced pupils.
It was his theory that Thea ought to be able to learn a great deal by
keeping her ears open