"I have just an hour, dear. Dimity has supper ready. Stay, won't you?"
"Yes," Paula forced herself to say. "I wanted to ask you about Quentin Charter. You were called away—just as you were speaking of him the other morning.... I have not met him, but his two recent books are very wonderful. I reviewed the second for The States. He thanked me in a letter which was open to answer."
Selma Cross stretched out her arms and laughed mirthlessly. "And so you two have been writing letters?" she observed. "I'm putting down a bet that his are rich—if he's interested."
Paula had steeled herself for this. There were matters which she must learn before making a decision which his telegram called for. Her mind held her inexorably to the work at hand, though her heart would have faltered in the thick cloud of misgivings.
"Yes, there is much in his letters—so much that I can't quite adjust him to the name you twice designated. Remember, you once before called him that—when I didn't know that you were speaking of Quentin Charter."
"I'll swear this much also," Selma Cross said savagely, "he has found your letters worth while."
"Is that to the point?"
"Why, yes Paula," the other replied, darting a queer look at her. "If I am to be held to a point—it is—because, as a writer, he uses what is of value. He makes women mad about him, and then goes back to his garret, and sobers up enough to write an essay or a story out of his recent first-hand studies in passion."
"You say he was drinking—when you knew him?"
"Enough to kill another man. It didn't seem to make his temperament play less magically. He was never silly or limp, either in mind or body, but he must have been burned to a cinder inside. He intimated that he didn't dare to go on exhibition any day before mid-afternoon."