"You've known me just two days," she said.
"If I can care this much in two days," he said, "think—but that's old, isn't it? Sometime soon I'm going to say to you: 'Whose girl are you?' and you're going to look up at me with a little heaven for two in your eyes and say: 'I'm Billy Magee's girl.' So before we go any further I must confess everything—I must tell you who this Billy Magee is—this man you're going to admit you belong to, my dear."
"You read the future glibly," she replied. "Are your prophecies true, I wonder?"
"Absolutely. Some time ago—on my soul, it was only yesterday—I asked if you had read a certain novel called The Lost Limousine, and you said you had, and that—it wasn't sincere. Well, I wrote it—"
"Oh!" cried the girl.
"Yes," said Magee, "and I've done others like it. Oh, yes, my muse has been a nouveau riche lady in a Worth gown, my ambition a big red motor-car. I've been a 'scramble a cent, mister' troubadour beckoning from the book-stalls. It was good fun writing those things, and it brought me more money than was good for me. I'm not ashamed of them; they were all right as a beginning in the game. But the other day—I thought an advertisement did the trick—I turned tired of that sort, and I decided to try the other kind—the real kind. I thought it was an advertisement that did it—but I see now it was because you were just a few days away."
"Don't tell me," whispered the girl, "that you came up here to—to—"
"Yes," smiled Magee, "I came up here to forget forever the world's giddy melodrama, the wild chase for money through deserted rooms, shots in the night, cupid in the middle distance. I came here to do—literature—if it's in me to do it."
The girl leaned limply against the side of Baldpate Inn.
"Oh, the irony of it!" she cried.