"Now tell me. Did you ever really know a counterpart of Jennie Frisbie?" she asked again. "She has become a sort of classic, you know. Women are weeping with her and love her to distraction. They wonder how a mere man can have so penetrated the inwardness of their sex and painted such a beautiful picture of it at its best."
"Don't know that I ever did, my dear young lady," I replied reluctantly.
"Of course you didn't. They're not really made that way. For my part, I think that a lot of women are cats," said the famed Cordelia. "But naturally we can't say it in print. Your answer should be that beneath the surface every woman holds the potentialities of a Jennie Frisbie. 'No, I have never known my heroine in person,' said Mr. Cole, looking dreamily out of the window, 'but I have known a thousand of her. She is a composite photograph, the final impression gathered by one who has done his best to obtain definite colors wherewith to paint a type, accurately and truthfully.' Yes, I think that'll do."
Her pencil was flying, as I looked at her, aghast.
"Miss Cordelia," I said, "you're a very attractive and bewitching young fraud."
She showed her pretty teeth, laughing heartily.
"I'm not at all a fraud," she disclaimed. "I deliver the goods, at least to my paper, and I never hurt people who are decently civil. How about your views on the Great American Novel?"
"It will probably be written by a Frenchman or a Jap," I answered, "for no man can do perfect justice to his own people."
"That's not so bad," she approved, "I think I'll put that down."
She asked me a few more questions, which I mostly answered with my usual confession of ignorance and which she replied to in her own fashion.