"Then you do remember," she remarked with an air of satisfaction. "Perhaps it was only because you liked the book yourself."
"Why not believe that it was because I put so much value on your opinion?"
"Oh, I am not so vain as that, Mr. Fairfield," she cried. "If you remember, it was not on my account."
He laughed without replying, and continued the careful tracing of the crack in the floor as if the occupation were the pleasantest imaginable. May watched him for a moment, and then with the semblance of pique she turned her shoulder toward him. The movement drew his eyes, and he suddenly stopped his occupation to straighten up apologetically.
"I was thinking," he said, "what would be the result of your reading such stories of mine as have been published—there have been a few, you know, in the magazines—if you were to test them by the standard of 'Love in a Cloud.' I'm afraid they might not stand it."
She smiled reassuringly, but perhaps with a faint suggestion of condescension.
"One doesn't expect all stories to be as good as the best," she observed.
Fairfield turned his face away for a quick flash of a grin to the universe in general; then with perfect gravity he looked again at his companion.
"I am afraid," he said, "that even the author of 'Love in a Cloud' wouldn't expect so much of you as that you should call his story the best."
"I do call it the best," she returned, a little defiantly. "Don't you?"