"What's the matter with the Casino?"
"Nothing; only it's rather early for tea yet."
"It isn't for soda-lemonade."
She set him the example of instantly rising, and led the way back along the lake to the Casino, resting at that afternoon hour among its spring flowers and blossoms innocent of its lurid after-dark frequentation. He got some paper from the waiter who came to take their order. She began to draw rapidly, and by the time the waiter came again she was giving Erlcort the last scrap of paper.
"Well," he said, "I had no idea that I had imagined anything so charming! If this critical bookstore doesn't succeed, it'll be because there are no critics. But what—what are these little things hung against the partitions of the shelves?"
"Oh—mirrors. Little round ones."
"But why mirrors of any shape?"
"Nothing; only people like to see themselves in a glass of any shape. And when," Margaret added, in a burst of candor, "a woman looks up and sees herself with a book in her hand, she will feel so intellectual she will never put it down. She will buy it."
"Margaret Green, this is immoral. Strike out those mirrors, or I will smash them every one!"
"Oh, very well!" she said, and she rubbed them out with the top of her pencil. "If you want your place a howling wilderness."