Part 14 (2/2)

”You don't understand--you are quite in error,” he articulated.

”She--she has refused me nothing, because--because I have asked nothing.”

Mr. Weil uttered a disheartened groan.

”But this will not do, my dear fellow!” he said. ”How can you accomplish anything unless you make a beginning? Rewriting the story that she has written will not advance you one step on the path you profess such anxiety to tread. That is only an excuse--a make-believe--a pretence under which you have been given quarters in this house and allowed every chance in creation to learn your lesson. Are you afraid of her, or what is the matter? Does she overpower you with her beauty? Tell me where your difficulty lies.”

But s.h.i.+rley could hardly answer these apparently simple questions. He said he feared the trouble might be in the formality of the situation.

How could Mr. Weil expect, he asked, that a spontaneous case of love-making would develop from such a condition of things.

”Stuff!” cried Archie, with a grimace. ”If you and she were members of a theatrical company, and were cast as a pair of lovers, you wouldn't find so many pitfalls. You would go ahead and repeat the lines of your part, wouldn't you? All you want is to do the same now.”

”But what _are_ the 'lines of my part?'” inquired the other, dolefully.

”Take her hand once in yours and they will come to you,” retorted Weil.

Roseleaf reddened so much that Archie regretted the severity of his tone, and hastened to turn the conversation to something more agreeable.

He made up his mind, however, to have a talk with Miss Fern, and at the first opportunity he did so. It was on an afternoon when he knew Roseleaf was in the city, and he came to the point at once, after his own fas.h.i.+on.

”How are you and my young friend getting along?” he asked her.

”Oh, as well as possible,” she responded. ”I am learning to like him more and more. I really shall be sorry when his task is done.”

Mr. Weil shrugged his shoulders.

”There's a bit of selfishness in your words, Miss Fern,” he said. ”Have you forgotten that he is not here to be useful to _you_ alone; that you agreed to do what you could for _him_, as well?”

The girl cast down her pretty eyes in confusion.

”I am sure I have tried to be agreeable,” she replied, gently.

”That is not enough,” replied Archie, gravely. ”What he needs is something--some one--to stir his blood, to awaken his fancy. I told you in the first place that you ought to make him fall in love with you--for literary reasons. He must feel a sensation stronger than mere friends.h.i.+p for a woman before he can write such a story as will bring him fame.”

Miss Millicent did not grow more comfortable under this suggestion. She remarked, after a long wait, that she did not see how the end sought was to be accomplished. Love, she said, was not a mere expression, it was a deep, actual ent.i.ty. Two people, playing at love with each other, might afterwards find that they were experimenting with fire.

”I have heard,” she continued, her fair cheeks growing crimson, ”that there are women--”

Then she paused and could go no further. But he understood.

”There are women--thousands of them,” he admitted, ”who would willingly do what I ask. If it is necessary, he must go to them.”

She wanted to say that she hoped it would not come to that--she wanted to convey to her companion the horror she felt for what she supposed his words implied--but she could not. It was so much easier to write of things than to talk of them to a man like him.

”Do you call it quite fair,” he asked, ”to claim all and give nothing?

He does not require much. Could you not let him take your hand, and--”

”And--”

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