ng,
trying to learn what he can learn. I must."

"You can't even tell me why you wept in the station?"

"For a simple silly reason. I was afraid. I had taken up a task too big
for me by far--taken it up bravely when I was out in the sunlight of
Reuton. But when I saw Upper Asquewan Falls, and the dark came, and that
dingy station swallowed me up, something gave way inside me and I felt I
was going to fail. So--I cried. A woman's way."

"If I were only permitted to help--" Mr. Magee pleaded.

"No--I must go forward alone. I can trust no one, now. Perhaps things
will change. I hope they will."

"Listen," said Mr. Magee. "I am telling you the truth. Perhaps you read
a novel called _The Lost Limousine_." He was resolved to claim its
authorship, tell her of his real purpose in coming to Baldpate, and urge
her to confide in him regarding the odd happenings at the inn.

"Yes," said the girl before he could continue. "I did read it. And it
hurt me. It was so terribly insincere. The man had talent who wrote it,
but he seemed to say: 'It's all a great big joke. I don't believe in
these people myself. I've just created them to make them dance for you.
Don't be fooled--it's only a novel.' I don't like that sort of thing. I
want a writer really to mean all he says from the bottom of his heart."

Mr. Magee bit his lip. His determination to claim the authorship of _The
Lost Limousine_ was quite gone.

"I want him to make me feel with his people," the girl went on
seriously. "Perhaps I can explain by telling you of something that
happened to me once. It was while I was at college. There was a blind
girl in my class and one night I went to call on her. I met her in the
corridor of her dormitory. Somebody had just brought her back from an
evening lecture, and left her there. She unlocked her door, and we went
in. It was pitch dark in the room--the first thing I thought of was a
light. But she--she just sat down and began to talk. She had forgot to
light the gas."

The girl paused, her eyes very wide, and it seemed to Mr. Magee that she
shivered slightly.

"Can you imagine it?" she asked. "She chatted on--quite cheerfully as I
remember it. And I--I stumbled round and fell into a chair, cold and
trembly and sick with the awful horror of blindness, for the first time
in my life. I thought I had imagined before what it was to be
blind--just by shutting my eyes for a second. But as I sat there in the
blackness, and listened to tha