"To tell me how you write your stories; or anything at all about them. Halo's so reckless—she doesn't stop to consider. And of course I'm burning to know. But people might think … you see, I simply must preserve my aloofness, my entire impartiality … or they'd say I was interfering… . And I'm sure I shall never like another story as much as yours. Oh, Mr. Weston, it's a dreadful responsibility," she wailed.

Vance was watching her curiously. He noticed the way her wandering eyes were set guardedly under a small contracted brow ("as if they were peering out of prison," he thought, "and reckoning up the chances of escape"). The idea amused him, and he had to rouse himself to answer: "You mean giving the prize is a responsibility? But you don't, do you? I thought there was a committee?"

"Of course, of course, but that's the reason. If it should be suspected that I tried to influence them … and yet I do so worship what you write!" She swayed nearer, enveloping him in a golden network of smiles and shimmers, imparting in confidential murmurs common-places that might have been published on the housetops, telling him what a burden her money was, how much she needed sympathy, how few people she could talk to as she was talking to him, how the moment she had read the first lines of "Unclaimed" she had felt that there was someone who would understand her—and how she envied his heroine for being able, even at the cost of her last penny, to be herself, to proclaim her love openly, to starve herself in order to build a monument to the man who had never known she loved him. "How you do know women!" she murmured, swaying and gazing and retreating. "How in the world did you ever guess …  ? Several of my friends have told me your Tullia was my living portrait… . But I mustn't talk of that now. Won't you come and see me some day? Yes—that would be better. I'm so alone, Mr. Weston—I do so need advice and encouragement! Sometimes I wish I'd never undertaken this prize business; but wealth has its duties, hasn't it?"

She had rambled on for a long time, yet not long enough to satisfy his curiosity, when suddenly she started back. "Oh, but I mustn't keep you any longer… . Why, there's Fynes over there staring at us!" she exclaimed in agitation. "He's one of our committee, you know. And he never goes to evening parties—not respectable ones, I mean. I daresay he's come here just to look you over… ." She stood up nervously.

"Tristram Fynes? Who wrote The Corner Grocery?"

Vance interrupted with a shock of excitement.

"Yes, over there. That dreary little man by the door. You think him so wonderful?"

"It's a big book."