ing," Pym would roar, flinging down the
manuscript,--"a dead thing because the stakes your man is playing for,
a woman's love, is less than a wooden counter to you. You are a fine
piece of mechanism, my solemn-faced don, but you are a watch that
won't go because you are not wound up. Nobody can wind the artist up
except a chit of a girl; and how you are ever to get one to take pity
on you, only the gods who look after men with a want can tell.

"It becomes more impenetrable every day," he said. "No use your
sitting there tearing yourself to bits. Out into the street with you!
I suspend these sittings until you can tell me you have kissed a
girl."

He was still saying this sort of thing when the famous "Letters" were
published--T. Sandys, author. "Letters to a Young Man About to be
Married" was the full title, and another almost as applicable would
have been "Bits Cut Out of a Story because They Prevented its
Marching." If you have any memory you do not need to be told how that
splendid study, so ennobling, so penetrating, of woman at her best,
took the town. Tommy woke a famous man, and, except Elspeth, no one
was more pleased than big-hearted, hopeless, bleary Pym.

"But how the ---- has it all come about!" he kept roaring.

"A woman can be anything that the man who loves her would have her
be," says the "Letters"; and "Oh," said woman everywhere, "if all men
had the same idea of us as Mr. Sandys!"

"To meet Mr. T. Sandys." Leaders of society wrote it on their
invitation cards. Their daughters, athirst for a new sensation,
thrilled at the thought, "Will he talk to us as nobly as he writes?"
And oh, how willing he was to do it, especially if their noses were
slightly tilted!

CHAPTER III

SANDYS ON WOMAN

"Can you kindly tell me the name of the book I want?"

It is the commonest question asked at the circulating library by
dainty ladies just out of the carriage; and the librarian, after
looking them over, can usually tell. In the days we have now to speak
of, however, he answered, without looking them over:

"Sandys's 'Letters,'"

"Ah, yes, of course. May I have it, please?"

"I regret to find that it is out."

Then the lady looked naughty. "Why don't you have two copies?" she
pouted.

"Madam," said the librarian, "we have a thousand."

A small and very timid girl of eighteen, with a neat figure that
shrank from observation, although it was already aware that it looked
best in gray, was ther