“You mean Mr. St. George—isn’t he delightful?”
Paul Overt met her eyes, which had a cool morning-light that would have half-broken his heart if he hadn’t been so young. “Alas I don’t know him. I only admire him at a distance.”
“Oh you must know him—he wants so to talk to you,” returned Miss Fancourt, who evidently had the habit of saying the things that, by her quick calculation, would give people pleasure. Paul saw how she would always calculate on everything’s being simple between others.
“I shouldn’t have supposed he knew anything about me,” he professed.
“He does then—everything. And if he didn’t I should be able to tell him.”
“To tell him everything?” our friend smiled.
“You talk just like the people in your book!” she answered.
“Then they must all talk alike.”
She thought a moment, not a bit disconcerted. “Well, it must be so difficult. Mr. St. George tells me it is—terribly. I’ve tried too—and I find it so. I’ve tried to write a novel.”
“Mr. St. George oughtn’t to discourage you,” Paul went so far as to say.