d me had quite changed. It was that of a nurse with an
invalid, she frankly ordered me about.

"Why can't you lie back on those cushions?" she asked one morning when
we were out in her boat. "You ought to be dozing half the day--and
instead you're as wide awake as an owl."

"I am," I admitted happily. "I'm trying to see everything." The chic
little hat and the blouse she wore were adorably fresh from Paris, and
as I watched her run her boat I could feel flowing into my body and soul
a perfectly boundless store of new life.

"I've been thinking you over," she said.

"Have you?" I asked delightedly. I had often wondered if she had. "What
do you think?" I inquired.

Eleanore frowned perplexedly.

"You're such a queer combination," she said. "You have such ridiculous
ups and downs. To-day you're way up, aren't you."

"I am," I said very earnestly. She looked off placidly over the Sound.

"You're so very sensitive," she went on. "You let things take hold of
you so hard. And yet on the other hand you seem to be so very----" she
hesitated for a word.

"Tough," I suggested cheerfully.

"No--hungry," Eleanore said. "You're always reaching out for things--you
jump right into them so hard. And even when they hurt you--and you're
hurt quite easily--you hang on and won't let go. Look at the way you've
gone at the harbor right from the start. And you're doing it
still--you've done it all summer until it has made you look like a
ghost. And I guess you'll keep on all your life. There are harbors
everywhere, you know--in a way the whole world is a harbor--and unless
you change a lot you're going to be hurt a good deal."

"My mother agreed with you," I said. "She wanted me to be a professor in
a quiet college town."

"Please stop twinkling your eyes," Eleanore commanded. "Your mother knew
you very well. You might have done that--and settled down--with some
nice quiet college girl--if you had done it years ago. As it is, of
course you're hopeless."

"I am not hopeless," I declared indignantly. "If I can only get what I
want I'll be the happiest fellow alive!"

"I know," she answered thoughtfully. "You told me that before. You want
fiction, don't you."

"Yes, fiction," I said wrathfully. "I want that more than anything
else. But I don't want any quiet kind, and I don't want any quiet town,"
I went on, leaning forward intensely. "I want the harbor and the city--I
want it thick and heavy, and just as fast as it will come.