"Is it so bad as that?"
"Oh, it isn't bad, only—Oh, I don't know what in the world you will think!"
"No matter what I think. I shan't tell you, my dear. No woman ever does that."
May regarded her with a mixture of curiosity and wistfulness in her look.
"You are talking that way just to give me courage," she said.
"Well, then," the other returned, laughing, "take courage, and tell me. What have you been doing?"
"Only writing letters."
"Only! Good gracious, May! writing letters may be worse than firing dynamite bombs. Women's letters are apt to be double-back-action infernal-machines; and girls' letters are a hundred times worse. Whom did you write to?"
"To the author of 'Love in a Cloud.'"
"To the author of 'Love in a Cloud'? How did you know him?"