"I don't know. You see, I know very little about the States."
"How about New York or Chicago?"
"Which is the nearest to you?" I asked, timidly.
He laughed outright at that.
"Oh, so you expect to see me, do you?"
"I want to," I said. "You will come to see me, won't you?"
"We'll see about it," he said slowly. "Then it's Chicago? I have interests there." I nodded.
"And now," he went on, "how much money do you need?"
That question hurt me more than I suppose he would have believed. Certainly I would need money to go to Chicago, but I hated to think of taking any from him. I felt like a beggar. Young, poor, ignorant as I was, even then I had an acute feeling of reluctance to permit any sordid considerations to come between this man and me. I was so long in answering him that he said lightly:
"Well, how many thousands or millions of shekels do you suppose it will take to support a little poetess in Chicago?"