f and his
audience happier; then that is Art.... But one need not use one's thumb,
you know."

"The--the way you make me happy? Is _that_ Art?"

"Do I?" she laughed. "Perhaps; for I am happy, too--far, far happier
than when I read the works of Henry Haynes. And Henry Haynes _is_ Art.
Oh, dear!"

But Harrow knew nothing of the intellectual obstetrics which produced
that great master's monotypes.

"Have you read Double or Quits?" he ventured shyly. "It's a humming Wall
Street story showing up the entire bunch and exposing the trading-stamp
swindle of the great department stores. The heroine is a detective
and--" She was looking at him so intently that he feared he had said
something he shouldn't. "But I don't suppose that would interest you,"
he muttered, ashamed.

"It does! It is _new_! I--I never read that sort of a novel. Tell me!"

"Are you serious?"

"Of course. It is perfectly wonderful to think of a heroine being a
detective."

"Oh, she's a dream!" he said with cautious enthusiasm. "She falls in
love with the worst stock-washer in Wall Street, and pushes him off a
ferry-boat when she finds he has cornered the trading-stamp market and
is bankrupting her father, who is president of the department store
trust----"

"Go on!" she whispered breathlessly.

"I will, but----"

"What is it? Oh--is it my hand you are looking for? Here it is; I only
wanted to smooth my hair a moment. Now tell me; for I never, never knew
that such books were written. The books my father permits us to read are
not concerned with all those vital episodes of every-day life. Nobody
ever _does_ anything in the few novels I am allowed to read--except,
once, in _Cranford_, somebody gets up out of a chair in one chapter--but
sits down again in the next," she added wearily.

"_I'll_ send you something to make anybody sit up and stay up," he said
indignantly. "Baffles, the Gent Burglar; Love Militant, by Nora Norris
Newman; The Crown-Snatcher, by Reginald Rodman Roony--oh, it's simply
ghastly to think of what you've missed! This is the Victorian era; you
have a right to be fully cognizant of the great literary movements of
the twentieth century!"

"I love to hear you say such things," she said, her beautiful face
afire. "I desire to be modern--intensely, humanly modern. All my life I
have been nourished on the classics of ages dead; the literature of the
Orient, of Asia, of Europe I am familiar with; the literature of
England--as far a