Thea temporarily moves to a students’ club to cut back on her commute, but she doesn’t like being surrounded by so many other girls. She works as a singer in a church and as a piano accompanist to pay for her living expenses and singing lessons.

Bowers is a good teacher but is unpopular because he isn’t warm. Thea appreciates Bowers, but she judges his other singing students as unintelligent. Thea is worried that she keeps disliking things in her life rather than enjoying herself.

Thea moves around a lot because she can’t find a place she truly likes.

Bowers teaches two well-known singers named Miss Darcey and Mrs. Priest. Thea observes them as Bowers’s accompanist. She doesn’t like their technique, but she analyzes why they’re so popular with an audience.

Bowers’s former student comes back to town and returns to lessons. Frederick Ottenburg is the heir to a beer business, so his singing lessons are for pleasure. Fred is handsome and personable. He “had a way of floating people out of dull or awkward situations, out of their own torpor or constraint or discouragement” (129-30). Fred plays the piano while Thea sings for him. Bowers admires them together.