"Come," I said, "now the ice is broken and we can say what we really think; and I must be pardoned for saying that that hero of yours, whom Mr. Lane praised, is the most insufferable cad I've encountered this many a day. He can't be set off against that lovely girl in my story. Why, the truth is, Miss Graham, I meant her to be what I fancied you might be. She's the ideal I built up from seeing you in the cars." "I must say," Miss Graham retorted with spirit, "that if you meant that pert heroine of yours for _me_, I am anything but complimented." "It is a pity, then, that you didn't intend your hero for me, and we should have been more than quits." She blushed so vividly that a sudden light burst upon me. "Good heavens!" I exclaimed, "he does have my eyes and beard; but you didn't see me. It isn't possible--" "But it is," interrupted she, desperately. "With a mirror in the end of the car directly before me all the way from New York, do you suppose I could help seeing you! I'm sure you kept your eyes on me steadily enough to give me a good excuse." I whistled rudely; whereat she looked offended, and we went on from one thing to another until we had got up a very respectable quarrel indeed. There is nothing more conducive to a thoroughly good understanding between persons of opposite sex than a genuine quarrel; and having reached the point where there was no alternative but to separate in anger or to apologize, we chose the latter course, and having mutually humbled ourselves, after that got on capitally. "It is my deliberate conviction," she observed, when we at length got upon a footing sufficiently familiar for jesting, "that this story is really mine, and that you purloined it from me by some mysterious clairvoyance." "That may be," I admitted. "I once guessed that a man was a bartender by the way he stirred his coffee at the steamer table, and that got me a very pretty reputation as a seer for a day or two; and very likely the truth is that I was all the time a mind-reader without knowing it." She smiled good-naturedly--more good-naturedly, indeed, than the jest deserved; and from that moment our acquaintance got on famously. The story was far from advancing as rapidly, however. A very brief time sufficed to reduce both versions of "April's Lady" to hopeless confusion, but to build from the fragments a new and improved copy was a labor of much magnitude. Circumstances moreover, conspired to hinder our work. It was necessary that we verify our impressions of material we had used, and to do this we were obliged to attend the theatre together, to read together various poems, and together to hear a good deal of music. A little ingenuity, and a common inclination to prolong these investigations, effected so great a lengthening out that it was several months before we could even pretend to be ready to begin serious work upon the story; and even then we were far from agreeing in a number of important particulars.