"Hark to her!" grinned The Author. "What! you don't believe all the nice things you've read about me?"
"I do not."
"You don't in the least look or write like a dehumanized saint, you know," supplemented Alicia, laughing.
"What do I look like, then?" He sat on the edge of a table and cuddled a bony knee. Behind his glasses his eyes began to twinkle.
"You look more like yourself than you do like your photographs," decided Alicia.
The Author threw up his hands.
"And now, tell me this, please: How, when, where, and from whom, did you acquire the supreme art of aiding and abetting an old house to grow young again without losing its character?"
"We were born," Alicia explained, "with the inherent desire to do just what we have been able to do here. This house gave us our big chance. But it wouldn't have been so—so in keeping with itself," she was feeling for the right words, "if it hadn't been for Mr. Nicholas Jelnik."
The Author pricked up his intellectual ears. His eyes narrowed.
"Jelnik? I knew a Jelnik, an Austrian alienist; met him at dinner at the American Ambassador's in Vienna; quiet, unassuming, pleasant man, and one of the greatest doctors in Europe."