rms, and the five feet four! It
is a woman's business to be loved and to make herself lovable. When you
have found this woman, if she has no lover, you will be expected to
officiate in that capacity. If she has one, you must supplant him as
soon as possible. And when you have fallen desperately, ravingly in love
with such a creature, you will not have to come to me for further
advice."

The young man surveyed the speaker with the utmost gravity.

"Have _you_ ever been in love?" he inquired.

"Never."

"Why?"

"It was not necessary; _I_ did not intend to write novels," said Archie,
with a laugh. "But, come, we have bothered Lawrence enough. Let us go."

He took the package containing Miss Fern's story, and sauntered out,
paying no attention to the peculiar glances that his friend, the critic,
threw at him as he was leaving.

CHAPTER IV.

WITH TITIAN TRESSES.

Mr. Weil deciphered the MSS. of Miss Fern with some difficulty. Not that
the handwriting was particularly illegible, though it did not in the
least resemble copperplate engraving; but, as Mr. Gouger had intimated,
the sentences were so badly constructed, and the punctuation so
different from that prescribed by the usual authorities, that he was
continually obliged to go back over his tracks and hunt for meanings.
Nevertheless, within an hour from the time when he sat down in his room
at the Hoffman House and opened the package he had brought, he had to
confess himself deeply interested.

Miss Fern had conceived some entertaining characters, and some very
unconventional situations. Her people were virile; her hero was strong
if not always grammatical; her heroine did and said things not common in
real life, and yet that were quite reasonable when her peculiar nature
and environment were considered.

Archie paused once in awhile to wonder how much of all this record was
within the direct knowledge of the young authoress; which expressions
conveyed her own ideas and which sentiments she would personally
endorse. Gouger might be right as to the exceeding purity of most of the
ladies who dealt in eroticism, but in this especial case Mr. Weil meant
to make an investigation on his own account before he accepted as a
universal rule the one his friend had laid down.

He did not go to sleep that night until he had finished his story. Had
it been arranged by a competent hand he could have read it in four
hours, but as it was he consumed eight in the wor