and heady sense of power. If she was
not "writing a book," as Mag reported, she was at least helping to write
one.

And she gave more to her lover than inspiration. He found her criticism
unexpectedly valuable. There had been no lack of brains in her family,
and the library at Storm was large and excellent. Philip Benoix and
James Thorpe had both supplemented the girls' reading with great wisdom,
so that Jacqueline's taste was formed upon far better literature than
that of the average woman of his acquaintance. She was not easily
shocked--Kate boasted that she had never put her girls' brains into
petticoats--but now and then, despite Channing's growing care,
unconscious product of his new chivalry, matter crept into his pages
which made her shake her head in quick distaste.

"People might _do_ things like that," she said once, of a particularly
unsavory episode, "but they'd never sit around and talk of it
afterwards. They'd be ashamed!"

It was a comment on human nature the shrewdness of which he promptly
appreciated. Jacqueline came to represent to him that invaluable portion
of a writer's public, the average female mind. Under her proud guidance,
Channing knew that he was writing the best and by far the cleanest of
his novels.

It was at such moments that the thought of marriage came to him, and he
reminded himself reluctantly that it would not do. "He travels fastest
who travels alone...."

"I must speak to your mother about your voice," he said once. "She will
have to let you study in Europe, or at least in New York. You're
seventeen, aren't you? There's a long road to travel. No time to be
lost."

"New York? But you live in Boston, don't you?"

"Heaven forbid! I was born in Boston, but one gets over it in time."

"I'm not sure now that it's worth while taking any more lessons," she
said dreamily.

"You'll never be a singer without them."

"Well--sometimes I think I don't want to be a singer, Mr. Channing.
Sometimes I think I'd rather be a--housekeeper, for instance."

"What! Give up fame and fortune for a hypothetical domestic career?"

"Not for a hypothetical one, no." She gave him a side-wise glance,
dimpling. "But I _would_ love to have a home of my own."

He humored her, for the sake of watching her rapt and eager face. "What
would you do with a house of your own?"

"Oh, I'd have pink silk curtains at all the windows, and loads of books,
and flowers, and a cook who could make things like Mr. F