you have written could make anybody
tired!" And then, with the mocking after-touch he had come to know so
well, and to look for: "Is that what you wanted me to say?"

"You are the spice of life and your name should have been Variety," he
countered feebly. "But I warn you beforehand: there is a frightful lot
of it. I have rewritten it from the beginning."

"So much the better," she affirmed. "You've been doling it out to me in
little morsels, and I've been aching to get it all at one bite." And she
began to read.

It was the first time he had had any of his own work read to him, and
the experience was a pure luxury; at once the keenest and the most
sensuous enjoyment he had ever known. Marvelling, as he was always moved
to marvel, at her bright mind and clever wit and clear insight, he was
driven to the superlatives again to find words to describe her reading.
Artistically, and as with the gifted sympathy of a born actress, she
seemed able to breathe the very atmosphere of the story. None of his
subtle nuances were lost; there was never an emphasis misplaced. Better
still, the impersonation was perfect. By turns she became himself,
_Joan_, _Fidelia_, _Fleming_, or one of the subsidiary characters,
speaking the parts, rather than reading them, with such a sure
apprehension of his meaning that he could almost fancy that she was
reading from his mind instead of following the manuscript.

When it was over; and he could not tell whether the interval should be
measured by minutes or hours; the return to the realities--the hot
afternoon, the tree-shaded veranda, the lake dimpling like a sheet of
molten metal under the sun-glare--was almost painful.

"It is wonderful--simply wonderful!" he said, drawing a deep breath; and
then, with a flush of honest confusion to drive away the work pallor:
"Of course, you know I don't mean the story; I meant your reading of it.
Hasn't any one ever told you that you have the making of a great actress
in you, Margery, girl?"

"No," she said shortly; and, dismissing that phase of the subject in the
single word: "Let's talk about the story. You have bettered it
immensely. What made you do it?"

"I don't know; some convincement that it was all wrong and out of
drawing as it stood, I suppose."

"Who gave you the convincement? Miss Farnham?"

His answer was meant to be truthful, but beauty of the intoxicating sort
is the most mordant of solvents for truth in the abstract.

"No; you did."