he last long talk we had together you told me you knew you could write
poems and plays and all sorts of things, you just felt that you could.
You were going to begin right away. You said that some months ago, and
you haven't done any writing at all. Now, have you?"

"No-o. No, but that doesn't mean I shan't by and by."

"But you didn't begin as you said you would. That was last spring, more
than a year ago, and I don't believe you have tried to write a single
poem. Have you?"

He was beginning to be ruffled. It was quite unusual for any one, most
of all for a girl, to talk to him in this way.

"I don't know that I have," he said loftily. "And, anyway, I don't see
that it is--is--"

"My business whether you have or not. I know it isn't. I'm sorry I
spoke. But, you see, I--Oh, well, never mind. And I do want you to know
how much I appreciate your helping me as you did just now. I don't know
how to thank you for that."

But thanks were not exactly what he wanted at that moment.

"Go ahead and say the rest," he ordered, after a short pause. "You've
said so much that you had better finish it, seems to me. I'm lazy, you
think. What else am I?"

"You're brave, awfully brave, and you are so strong and quick--yes,
and--and--masterful; I think that is the right word. You ordered me
about as if I were a little girl. I didn't want to keep still, as you
told me to; I wanted to scream. And I wanted to faint, too, but you
wouldn't let me. I had never seen you that way before. I didn't know you
could be like that. That is what surprises me so. That is why I said you
were so different."

Here was balm for wounded pride. Albert's chin lifted. "Oh, that was
nothing," he said. "Whatever had to be done must be done right off, I
could see that. You couldn't hang on where you were very long."

She shuddered. "No," she replied, "I could not. But _I_ couldn't think
WHAT to do, and you could. Yes, and did it, and made me do it."

The chin lifted still more and the Speranza chest began to expand.
Helen's next remark was in the natures of a reducer for the said
expansion.

"If you could be so prompt and strong and--and energetic then," she
said, "I can't help wondering why you aren't like that all the time. I
had begun to think you were just--just--"

"Lazy, eh?" he suggested.

"Why--why, no-o, but careless and indifferent and with not much
ambition, certainly. You had talked so much about writing and yet you
never tried to write