"Perhaps," he admitted. "But suppose I have found her now, when I know the value of things."
"Suppose you should find her now—within a reasonable time. What would you do?"
"Marry her," he exclaimed promptly. "Marry her and take her to Grenoble, and live the life my father lived before me."
She did not reply, but rose, and he followed her to the shaded corner of the porch where they usually sat. The bundle of yellow-stained envelopes he had brought were lying on the table, and Honora picked them up mechanically.
"I have been thinking," she said as she removed the elastics, "that it is a mistake to begin a biography by the enumeration of one's ancestors. Readers become frightfully bored before they get through the first chapter."
"I'm beginning to believe," he laughed, "that you will have to write this one alone. All the ideas I have got so far have been yours. Why shouldn't you write it, and I arrange the material, and talk about it! That appears to be all I'm good for."
If she allowed her mind to dwell on the vista he thus presented, she did not betray herself.
"Another thing," she said, "it should be written like fiction."
"Like fiction?"
"Fact should be written like fiction, and fiction like fact. It's difficult to express what I mean. But this life of your father deserves to be widely known, and it should be entertainingly done, like Lockhart, or Parton's works—"