ap. Those were the days when lumbermen's
daughters and brewers' wives contended in song; studied in Germany and
then floated from SANGERFEST to SANGERFEST. Choral societies flourished
in all the rich lake cities and river cities. The soloists came to
Chicago to coach with Bowers, and he often took long journeys to hear
and instruct a chorus. He was intensely avaricious, and from these
semi-professionals he reaped a golden harvest. They fed his pockets and
they fed his ever-hungry contempt, his scorn of himself and his
accomplices. The more money he made, the more parsimonious he became.
His wife was so shabby that she never went anywhere with him, which
suited him exactly. Because his clients were luxurious and extravagant,
he took a revengeful pleasure in having his shoes halfsoled a second
time, and in getting the last wear out of a broken collar. He had first
been interested in Thea Kronborg because of her bluntness, her country
roughness, and her manifest carefulness about money. The mention of
Harsanyi's name always made him pull a wry face. For the first time Thea
had a friend who, in his own cool and guarded way, liked her for
whatever was least admirable in her.

Thea was still looking at the musical paper, her grammar unopened on the
window-sill, when Bowers sauntered in a little before two o'clock. He
was smoking a cheap cigarette and wore the same soft felt hat he had
worn all last winter. He never carried a cane or wore gloves.

Thea followed him from the reception-room into the studio. "I may cut my
lesson out to-morrow, Mr. Bowers. I have to hunt a new boarding-place."

Bowers looked up languidly from his desk where he had begun to go over a
pile of letters. "What's the matter with the Studio Club? Been fighting
with them again?"

"The Club's all right for people who like to live that way. I don't."

Bowers lifted his eyebrows. "Why so tempery?" he asked as he drew a
check from an envelope postmarked "Minneapolis."

"I can't work with a lot of girls around. They're too familiar. I never
could get along with girls of my own age. It's all too chummy. Gets on
my nerves. I didn't come here to play kindergarten games." Thea began
energetically to arrange the scattered music on the piano.

Bowers grimaced good-humoredly at her over the three checks he was
pinning together. He liked to play at a rough game of banter with her.
He flattered himself that he had made her harsher than she was when she
first cam