"Is it something you have made up your mind to do?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered, looking at him, surprised. "How did you guess?"
"Then don't tell me till to-morrow. I want to think that this won't end—that it will always be a rising tide and—and we watching it together."
That newly acquired pulse of Kathleen's asserted itself again, but she swallowed past it resolutely. "Oh, I shall still be able to watch the rising tide—once in a while," she answered, laughing. "But I'm going to tell you. I'm writing a little book. There!"
"What?" cried Phil.
"Yes, and I'm going to publish it. Mr. Tremaine likes the idea. He is the only one I've told."
"And is that all?" asked Phil eagerly.
"All!" Kathleen regarded him with mock indignation. The little pulse prevented its being genuine. "Is all you're going to do, just to paint pictures, Mr. Sidney?"
"Why, I think that's bully," exclaimed Phil, turning so suddenly as to test the sharpness of his rocky couch. "Tell me about it."
"Well, for the past year, I have been bewitched by the microscope. It reveals a world that we are too clumsy to discern. The idea occurred to me to write a series of microscopic fairy tales."