ess terribly aloof, less
altogether impossible to question if she should have the happiness of
obtaining an interview.

She put her request at last very timidly to her new friend.

"Do you think he would give me an interview--just a very, very short
one?"

But now Kate Kinross was perturbed.

"My dear girl," she said (all women she liked were "dear girls" to
Kate), "I simply dare not ask him. He has stood out against it so
persistently all these five years. He simply hates publicity; he says
all he asks is to do his work, to do it as he likes, and to go his own
way as unmolested and as privately as a bricklayer does."

"But just a very, very short one," pleaded Miss Bibby. She went on to
tell Kate about Thomas's letter, the editor's offer, this chance of a
lifetime for herself.

Kate almost groaned.

"Five years have I kept them off him," she said, "five whole years, and
not one interviewer have I even allowed to get across the doorway! And
you would have me plot against his peace like this!"

Miss Bibby urged no more, just sat still and swallowed heroically once
or twice, and then said smilingly that it "didn't matter at all."

But Kate's keen eyes were on her all the time. Something about this
slender woman with the grey, half-startled eyes, and the soft mouth that
quivered so easily, and the soft, thin cheek where the pink pulsed to
and fro as rapidly as in a young girl's, touched her curiously.

She stood up at last and put a hand on her visitor's shoulder in a
hearty, encouraging way.

"My dear girl," she said, "come along, you shall have your chance. He
had his, I'll remind him of that. He will probably never forgive me, but
I will risk that. Come along."

"But not now--you don't mean now?" gasped Miss Bibby, shrinking back in
actual alarm, for her hostess seemed seeking to pilot her into the
house. It would certainly take a week or two to persuade the author, she
counted, and she herself would consequently have that length of time in
which to screw up her courage.

"Certainly now," said Miss Kinross, "this minute. Why not? He's only in
that room across the hall."

"Oh, oh," gasped Miss Bibby, "I--I must have time--I--I daren't--Oh,
Oh--don't knock at the door--for Heaven's sake."

Kate laughed and drew back one moment.

"My dear girl," she said, "he's not in the least brutal, as he seems
from his books. You couldn't meet with a more harmless man if you hunted
for a year. Don't you be alarmed-