me--especially Angelo."

He gazed at her questioningly as she sat down on a sofa opposite to him.
He stood with his back against a marble pillar, and in his eyes was the
look that comes to the eyes of a lion teased by a boy whom he cannot
reach through the bars of his cage.

"It's a story in which Miss Jewett's been collaborating with me," Idina
continued. "Between us we've brought it to a fine point. I couldn't go
on a step more till she came. You can imagine how tired I was of
waiting, for I wanted to be at work. Now we've gathered up all our
threads."

The baited look faded from Angelo's eyes. "You're writing a novel
together?" he asked, smiling faintly.

"We've been piecing together a plot which might make a novel," said
Idina. "That's why I wanted you to come out with us, instead of smoking
your cigar in the house. I'd like to tell the story and see what you
think of it, because I believe you are a very good judge. And a man's
opinion of such things is always valuable. But please smoke! I won't
begin till you do. I want that reminder of old times to give me
inspiration."

Angelo, entirely at his ease now, though still slightly bored, lit his
cigar. The pillar against which he leaned was close to Marie's red
hammock. He could look down at her while he smoked, and as she swung
back and forth her dress all but brushed his knee.

"Our heroine is an English girl, or perhaps Scottish, we haven't decided
which," Idina began in her deep voice. "She's pretty, fascinating to
men, in fact a man's woman. To other women she is a cat. And she's by
nature as deceitful as all creatures of the cat tribe."

"Why take such a person for your heroine?" Angelo wanted to know.

"She's thrust upon us by the exigencies of the story. And, besides--why,
Angelo, if you could meet the girl as I see her in real life, you'd
admire her beyond anything! She would be exactly your style. You, being
a man, wouldn't know that she was deceitful and a cat."

"I'm sure I should know," he protested, with an involuntary glance at
Marie, so saintlike and virginal in her meekly fichued dress. "You've
just said that you considered me a good judge."

"Not of a woman's character, but of what ought to happen to the heroine
of our story in the end," Idina explained. "That's what I meant. You
must give us the end of the story. But I'll go on. The girl--our
heroine--comes upon the scene first at a convent-school in Scotland."

Idina paused for an insta