Eleanore.

"Did you?" I asked delightedly. Far from retiring into my shell, I
wanted at once to open up and make her feel how much I had missed in
that crude effort. Soon she had me talking about it. And while I talked
on eagerly, I tried to guess from her questions whether she'd read it
more than once. Finally I guessed she had. And, glancing at her now and
then, I wondered how much she could ever know about me or I about
her--really know. And the intimacy I saw ahead loomed radiant and
boundless. I strained every nerve to show her myself, to show her the
very best of myself.

But then I heard her ask me,

"Wouldn't you like to talk to my father?"

Here was a fine end to it all.

"I don't know," I answered gloomily. I could see already those engineer
eyes moving amusedly down my pages. I could see her watching his face
and getting to feel as he did about me. "What good would it do?" I
added.

"What good would it do?" Her sharply offended tone brought me back with
a jerk to try to explain.

"Don't you see what I mean!" I asked eagerly. "Why should a man as busy
as he is waste his time on a kid like me? After all that you've told me
about him, I feel sometimes as though all the writers on earth don't
count any more, because all the really big things are being done by men
like your father."

"That's much better," said Eleanore. "Only of course it isn't true. If
you poor little writers want to get big and really count," she went on
serenely, "all you have to do is to write about my father."

"I'll begin the minute you say so," I told her.

"Then it's arranged," said my companion, with an exceedingly comfortable
sigh. "We've taken a cottage up on the Sound for the summer," she
continued. "And we're moving up to-morrow. Suppose you come up over
Sunday."

"Thanks. I'd love to," I replied.

"So she's to be away for months," I added dismally to myself. "No more
of these long afternoons."

CHAPTER X

On the following Saturday, when I met her boat at an East River dock, at
once I felt a difference. We were waiting for her father. The moments
dragged and I grew glum, try as I would to be pleasant.

"Here he is," she said at last.

Tall, rather lank and loosely clothed, Dillon was coming down the pier
in easy leisurely fashion, talking to a man by his side. His face
lighted up when he saw us.

"Just a minute," he said.

His voice was low but it had a peculiar carrying quality. His rugged
face was d