She reached to the mantel-shelf, and, taking down a square silver cigarette-box, scrawled all over its top and sides with well-known women's names, handed it across to him. She lit one herself and arranged her satin draperies.
"You speak as though I had 'arrived!'"
"Oh! success will come," she said confidently. "It's the beginnings that are most fascinating. I want to be taken behind the scenes. Come, wizard!" she pleaded "let me be inquisitorial and curious while I'm under your spell. To-morrow you'll be my rival. Who knows but that I may hate you then?"
Ingram considered a moment, and flicked the ashes from his cigarette.
"There's not much to tell," he said slowly. "You may have heard or guessed that I'm a poor man's son. We have our decayed families in Massachusetts, though I suppose we haven't quite so far back to decay. I didn't learn much more at free school than to read and write and figure, but you know with what care and reverence the first steps are guarded in our country. Nothing so trivial and hopeless as the average English taste in letters could leave even our primaries. I may say 'our country,' 'our primaries,' may I not?"
She flashed her sympathy.
"Afterward I led a very lonely life for years. I don't mean comparative loneliness, or even such loneliness as a man may achieve for himself in any big city. I mean weeks, months, with never a human face. And during that time I think"—he laughed—"I think I read every book in the world."
"No writing? No early efforts?"
"I was twenty-eight before I tried. When I wrote my first essay I'd almost forgotten how to hold a pen. Please," he urged quickly, "you must try and believe it."
"I am believing every word you say."