"Because you understand them better?"

"Not only that," she said slowly, "but I think that men who write novels try to make the women happy, and the women who write novels do not do that so much; and I think the women must be nearer the truth."

She turned suddenly on me:

"You have written a book."

"Guilty," I said.

"And what does that mean?"

"It means that I have," I said lamely. We talked international differences.

"American women use very many pins, is it not true?"

"I think it is true," I said.

"We do not," she said; "we use what you call"—with her fingers on a little cord at the breast of her kimono—"strings. But," she added suddenly, "an American says to me that I must not speak of such things."