rests my mind to
go over them."

They were looking out of the window. Thea kept his arm. Down on the
river four battleships were anchored in line, brilliantly lighted, and
launches were coming and going, bringing the men ashore. A searchlight
from one of the ironclads was playing on the great headland up the
river, where it makes its first resolute turn. Overhead the night-blue
sky was intense and clear.

"There's so much that I want to tell you," she said at last, "and it's
hard to explain. My life is full of jealousies and disappointments, you
know. You get to hating people who do contemptible work and who get on
just as well as you do. There are many disappointments in my profession,
and bitter, bitter contempts!" Her face hardened, and looked much older.
"If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that
one must give up for it, then you must hate the cheap thing just as
hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate! A contempt
that drives you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose
everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever knew you could
be." As she glanced at Dr. Archie's face, Thea stopped short and turned
her own face away. Her eyes followed the path of the searchlight up the
river and rested upon the illumined headland.

"You see," she went on more calmly, "voices are accidental things. You
find plenty of good voices in common women, with common minds and common
hearts. Look at that woman who sang ORTRUDE with me last week. She's new
here and the people are wild about her. 'Such a beautiful volume of
tone!' they say. I give you my word she's as stupid as an owl and as
coarse as a pig, and any one who knows anything about singing would see
that in an instant. Yet she's quite as popular as Necker, who's a great
artist. How can I get much satisfaction out of the enthusiasm of a house
that likes her atrociously bad performance at the same time that it
pretends to like mine? If they like her, then they ought to hiss me off
the stage. We stand for things that are irreconcilable, absolutely. You
can't try to do things right and not despise the people who do them
wrong. How can I be indifferent? If that doesn't matter, then nothing
matters. Well, sometimes I've come home as I did the other night when
you first saw me, so full of bitterness that it was as if my mind were
full of daggers. And I've gone to sleep and wakened up in the Kohlers'
garden, with the pigeon