an, and his sympathetic, solicitous interest in women is as
youthful as it is Western and American.

During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept
returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had known
long ago and whom both of us admired. More than any other person we
remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions,
the whole adventure of our childhood. To speak her name was to call
up pictures of people and places, to set a quiet drama going in one's
brain. I had lost sight of her altogether, but Jim had found her again
after long years, had renewed a friendship that meant a great deal to
him, and out of his busy life had set apart time enough to enjoy that
friendship. His mind was full of her that day. He made me see her again,
feel her presence, revived all my old affection for her.

"I can't see," he said impetuously, "why you have never written anything
about Antonia."

I told him I had always felt that other people--he himself, for one knew
her much better than I. I was ready, however, to make an agreement with
him; I would set down on paper all that I remembered of Antonia if he
would do the same. We might, in this way, get a picture of her.

He rumpled his hair with a quick, excited gesture, which with him often
announces a new determination, and I could see that my suggestion took
hold of him. "Maybe I will, maybe I will!" he declared. He stared out
of the window for a few moments, and when he turned to me again his eyes
had the sudden clearness that comes from something the mind itself sees.
"Of course," he said, "I should have to do it in a direct way, and say
a great deal about myself. It's through myself that I knew and felt her,
and I've had no practice in any other form of presentation."

I told him that how he knew her and felt her was exactly what I most
wanted to know about Antonia. He had had opportunities that I, as a
little girl who watched her come and go, had not.

Months afterward Jim Burden arrived at my apartment one stormy winter
afternoon, with a bulging legal portfolio sheltered under his fur
overcoat. He brought it into the sitting-room with him and tapped it
with some pride as he stood warming his hands.

"I finished it last night--the thing about Antonia," he said. "Now, what
about yours?"

I had to confess that mine had not gone beyond a few straggling notes.

"Notes? I didn't make any." He drank his tea all at once and put d