"But, what do you do all the time? How can you sit by the side of a pretty girl, and kiss her cheeks, and put your arm around her, and yet keep from falling in love?"
The younger man gasped at each of these suggestions, like one who has stepped into icy water and feels it gradually creeping upward.
"I have done none of those things," he faltered.
"None of them! Then I shall not let you stay here!" cried Archie. "What does the girl expect? That we are going to make her reputation in the literary world and get nothing for ourselves? I never heard such effrontery! She refuses to give you the least opportunity, does she—the jade!"
More and more confused grew the other at these expressions.
"You don't understand—you are quite in error," he articulated. "She—she has refused me nothing, because—because I have asked nothing."
Mr. Weil uttered a disheartened groan.
"But this will not do, my dear fellow!" he said. "How can you accomplish anything unless you make a beginning? Rewriting the story that she has written will not advance you one step on the path you profess such anxiety to tread. That is only an excuse—a make-believe—a pretence under which you have been given quarters in this house and allowed every chance in creation to learn your lesson. Are you afraid of her, or what is the matter? Does she overpower you with her beauty? Tell me where your difficulty lies."
But Shirley could hardly answer these apparently simple questions. He said he feared the trouble might be in the formality of the situation. How could Mr. Weil expect, he asked, that a spontaneous case of love-making would develop from such a condition of things.
"Stuff!" cried Archie, with a grimace. "If you and she were members of a theatrical company, and were cast as a pair of lovers, you wouldn't find so many pitfalls. You would go ahead and repeat the lines of your part, wouldn't you? All you want is to do the same now."