yesterday--I asked
if you had read a certain novel called _The Lost Limousine_, and you
said you had, and that--it wasn't sincere. Well, I wrote it--"

"Oh!" cried the girl.

"Yes," said Magee, "and I've done others like it. Oh, yes, my muse has
been a _nouveau riche_ lady in a Worth gown, my ambition a big red
motor-car. I've been a 'scramble a cent, mister' troubadour beckoning
from the book-stalls. It was good fun writing those things, and it
brought me more money than was good for me. I'm not ashamed of them;
they were all right as a beginning in the game. But the other day--I
thought an advertisement did the trick--I turned tired of that sort, and
I decided to try the other kind--the real kind. I thought it was an
advertisement that did it--but I see now it was because you were just a
few days away."

"Don't tell me," whispered the girl, "that you came up here to--to--"

"Yes," smiled Magee, "I came up here to forget forever the world's giddy
melodrama, the wild chase for money through deserted rooms, shots in the
night, cupid in the middle distance. I came here to do--literature--if
it's in me to do it."

The girl leaned limply against the side of Baldpate Inn.

"Oh, the irony of it!" she cried.

"I know," he said, "it's ridiculous. I think all this is meant just
for--temptation. I shall be firm. I'll remember your parable of the
blind girl--and the lamp that was not lighted. I'll do the real stuff.
So that when you say--as you certainly must some day--'I'm Billy Magee's
girl' you can say it proudly."

"I'm sure," she said softly, "that if I ever do say it--oh, no, I didn't
say I would"--for he had seized her hands quickly--"if I ever do say
it--it will certainly be proudly. But now--you don't even know my
name--my right one. You don't know what I do, nor where I come from, nor
what I want with this disgusting bundle of money. I sort of feel, you
know--that this is in the air at Baldpate, even in the winter time. No
sooner have the men come than they begin to talk of--love--to whatever
girls they find here--on this very balcony--down there under the trees.
And the girls listen, for--it's in the air, that's all. Then autumn
comes, and everybody laughs, and forgets. May not our autumn come--when
I go away?"

"Never," cried Magee. "This is no summer hotel affair to me. It's a real
in winter and summer love, my dear--in spring and fall--and when you go
away, I'm going too, about ten feet behind."

"Yes,"