ed us. The amazing miracle was that we, also we, were their sort
of folk!

I knew I was being given unbuyable things. One could not live under
the same roof with thin dark Luis Morenas and view what magic his
pencil worked, without learning somewhat of the holiness of creative
work. One couldn't listen to The Author without being somewhat
brightened by his daring wit, his glowing genius; nor live face to
face with big Westmacote without revering the broadness of the
American master spirit, to which Big Business is only a part of the
Great Game. As for Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons, it didn't take
Alicia and me long to discover what real depths underlay that
Boston-spinster mind of hers.

And you simply couldn't breathe the same air with The
Suffragist--who appeared with two trunks, three valises, and a
type-writer, all covered with "Votes for Women!" stickers--without
an expansion of the chest. She gave you the impression of having
been dressed by machinery out of gear, and of then having been
whacked flat with a shovel. When she clapped on what she called a
hat, you wondered whether a heron hadn't built its nest on her
head. But when she began to speak, you listened with the ears of
your immortal soul stretched wide. Women worshiped her, though Mr.
Jelnik's eyes danced, and Westmacote's military mustache bristled a
bit, and she all but drove Doctor Richard Geddes, who had notions of
his own, out of his senses.

"Stop trying to argue with me, my dear man," she'd say in her rich
voice, "but come and let us reason together. I haven't heard one
word of reason from you yet!" And she'd let loose one of her
rollicking laughs that set the doctor's teeth on edge and made The
Author shudder. The Author snarled to me that she laughed like a
rolling-mill and reasoned like a head-on collision. He put her in
his new book, clothes and all. Just as Luis Morenas, with an edged
smile on his thin lips, made rapid-fire sketches of her. _He_ called
her "The Future-Maker."

Now, shouldn't Alicia and I have been happy? And yet we weren't.
Alicia's laugh wasn't so frequent. I would catch her watching me,
with an odd, troubled, anxious speculation in her eyes. She had a
habit of blushing suddenly, and as quickly paling. And quietly, but
none the less surely and definitely, she had begun to avoid Doctor
Richard Geddes. It wasn't that she ceased to be friendly; but she
placed between herself and him one of those women-built,
impalpable, im