"Get out of the business, one would suppose."
"Well, now, that brings me to the point. In the midst of all my other worriments, I am debating whether to marry a rich girl and escape work, or a poor girl and work harder, or to give the whole matter of marriage up forever."
"These are actual cases, not hypothetical, this time?"
Mason turned a slow eye upon him.
"I have no need to fly to hypothetical cases," he said, dryly. "In the first place, my hero—if you incline tonight to that theory of the case—my hero is equally interested in two young women. This is contrary to the story books, but then only an occasional novelist tells the truth. I'm to be that one."
He seemed to be going off upon some other line of thought, and Sanborn hauled him back by asking a pertinent question:
"You mean to say both of these young ladies have that glamour?"
"O, not at all! They did have, but it has faded in both cases, as in all previous cases, yet more seems to have remained, or else I am getting a little less exacting. In the case of the sculptress—she's the poor girl, of course—she's a genius. The first time I saw her she read a paper on 'The Modern in Sculpture' (it was good, too). She was dressed beautifully, in cheese-cloth, for all I know—I only know she put to shame her sculptured copies of Hope and Ariadne. The glamour was around her like rose-colored flame. It was about her still when I stepped up to her. She was tall, and strong as a young lioness. Her clean, sweet eyes were level with mine, and she made me ashamed of every mean thing I had uttered in my whole life."
"Well, well!" exclaimed Sanborn.
"She was flattered and exalted to think 'the editor' was pleased with her essay, and the rest was easy. I went to call on her a day or two later——"