ee it clearly enough when you point it out," he
admitted, putting his craftsman pride underfoot, as he was always
obliged to do in these talks with her. "I should be discouraged if you
didn't keep on telling me that the story, as a story, is good."

"It _is_ good; it is a big story," she asserted, with kindling
enthusiasm. "The plot, so far as you have gone with it, is fine; and
that is where you leave me away behind. I don't see how you could ever
think it out. And the character-drawing is fine, too, some of it. Your
_Fleming_ is as far beyond me as your _Fidelia_ seems to be beyond you."

"_Fleming_ is human in every drop of his blood," he boasted.

"I don't doubt it for a moment; all the little ear-marks of humanity are
there, and I know in reason that he must be a type. But I have never met
the man himself; and I am sure I shall be scared silly if I ever do meet
him. Think of being shut up in any little corner of the world with a man
who has convinced himself that he can commit any crime in the calendar
so long as he believes the particular one he chooses isn't a crime!"

"Crime, so-called, is like everything else in this world; a thing to be
defined strictly by the motive and the point of view," said Griswold,
mounting his hobby with joyous alacrity.

"I know; that is what you say"--this with an adorable uptilt of the
pretty chin and a flash of the dark eyes which an instant before had
been slumbrous wells of studious abstraction. "But your _Fleming_ is
going to prove the contrary; it may not be what you want him to do, but
it will be what he will insist upon doing before you get through with
him. You have already indicated it in the story, unconsciously, perhaps.
When _Fidelia_ surprises him, _Fleming_ is almost ready to kill her;
not in defense of the principle he has set up, but to save his own
miserable life."

"That is a part of his humanity," insisted the craftsman stubbornly.
"You don't know _Fleming_ yet. Have you ever met _Fidelia_?"

"Not as you have drawn her--no. She is too unutterably fine. If she had
a single shred of humanity about her, I should suspect you of meaning to
fall in love with her, farther along--to the humiliation and despair of
poor _Joan_, who, as you say, is a mere daughter of men."

"But how about _Joan_?" he fretted. "Is she out of drawing, too?"

"Yes; you are distorting her the other way--making her too inhumanly
worldly and insincere." Then, with an abruptness that was li