tell you."

"What have you done so far?" asked Gouger.

"You want to know it all, eh?" responded Mr. Weil. "I don't think I am
justified in letting you too deeply into our secrets. However, you are
too honorable to betray us, and so here goes: I have instructed my
protege that he must fall violently under the tender passion before next
Saturday night."

"With a lady whom you have selected, of course?"

"By no means. He must catch his own sweethearts."

Mr. Gouger played with his watchchain.

"And this is Tuesday," he commented. "Do you think he will succeed?"

"He must," laughed Weil. "It's like the case of the boy who was digging
out the woodchuck. 'The minister's coming to dinner.'"

"You might at least have got an introduction for him," said Gouger,
reflectively.

"Not I. There's nothing in our agreement that puts such a task on me.
Besides, there's no romance in an introduction. He would write a story
as prosy as one of Henry James' if he started off like that."

Mr. Gouger nodded his head slowly.

"That would be something to avoid at all hazards," he assented.

And at this juncture, to the surprise of both the parties to this
conversation, the young man of whom they were speaking entered the room.

"I was telling Mr. Gouger of our agreement," said Mr. Weil, as soon as
the greetings were over. "How do you get along? Have you discovered your
heroine yet?"

Mr. Roseleaf answered, with an air of timidity, in the negative.

"I don't quite know where to find one," he said.

Mr. Weil spread out his arms to their fullest capacity.

"There are thirty millions of them in the United States alone," he
exclaimed. "Out of that number you ought to find a few whom you can
study. What a pity that _I_ cannot write! I would go out of that door
and in ten minutes I would have a subject ready for vivisection."

The younger man raised his eyebrows slightly.

"But, that kind of a woman--would be what you would want--the kind that
would let you talk to her on a mere street acquaintance!"

Mr. Weil leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs.

"Oh, yes," he said. "She would do for a beginning. Don't imagine that
none of these easy going girls are worth the attention of a novelist.
Sometimes they are vastly more interesting than the bread and butter
product of the drawing rooms. It won't do, in your profession, to
ignore any sort of human being."

Roseleaf breathed a sigh as soft as his name.

"You were righ