gs I think are right."

"And you don't care what Richard Brooks thinks?"

The color mounted. "No," steadily.

"Nor Miss Chesley?"

"Of course not."

"Not of course. You do care. You'd hate it if you thought they'd
criticize. And you'd cry after you went to bed."

She felt that such clairvoyance was uncanny. "I wouldn't cry."

"Well, you'd feel like it."

"Please don't talk about me in that way. It really doesn't make any
difference how I feel, does it? And your lunch is getting cold."

"What made you bring it? Why didn't you let Mrs. Bower or Beulah?"

"Mrs. Bower is lying down, and Beulah has been ironing all the morning."

"The next time call me, and I'll wait upon myself."

"Perhaps I shall." She surveyed his tray. "I've forgotten the cream for
your coffee."

"I don't take cream. Oh, please don't go. I want you to see my books and
my other belongings."

He had brought dozens of books, a few pictures, a little gilded Chinese
god, a bronze bust of Napoleon.

"Everything has a reason for being dragged around with me. That etching
of Helleu's is like my little sister, Mimi, who is at school in a
convent, and who constitutes my whole family. The gilded Chinese god is a
mascot--the Napoleon intrigues the imagination."

"Do you think so much of Napoleon?" coldly. "He was a little great man.
I'd rather talk to my children of George Washington."

"You women have a grudge against him because of Josephine."

"Yes. He killed something in himself when he put her from him. And the
world knew it, and his downfall began. He forgot that love is the
greatest thing in the world."

How lovely she was, all fire and feeling!

"Jove," he said, staring, "if you could write, you'd make people sit up
and listen. You've kept your dreams. That's what the world wants--the
stuff that dreams are made of. And most of us have lost ours by the time
we know how to put things on paper."

* * * * *

For days the sound of Geoffrey's typewriter could be heard in the hall.
"Does it disturb Peggy?" he asked Anne late one night as he met her on
the stairs.

"No; her room is too far away. You were so good to send her the lovely
toys. She adores the plush pussy cat."

"I like cats. They are coy--and caressing. Dogs are too frankly adoring."

"The eternal masculine." She smiled at him. "Is your work coming on?"

"I have a first chapter. May I read it to you?"

"Please--I should love it."

She wa