"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, "what a psychological conundrum, or whatever you choose to call it. The whole matter is as plain to me now as daylight." "Well?" Mr. Lane asked, while Miss Graham regarded me with an air which seemed to question whether my insanity were of a dangerous type. "Pardon me, Miss Graham, if I cross-question you a little," I went on, becoming somewhat excited. "You came from New York on the morning train on Wednesday, the fifteenth--no, the sixteenth of last April, did you not?" "Yes," she answered, her color again a trifle heightened, but her appearance being rather that of perplexity than of self-consciousness. "And on the way you read Swinburne till you came to the line, 'If you were April's lady, and I were lord of May,' and it occurred to you what a capital name for a story 'April's Lady' would be?" "Yes," she repeated; and then, with a yet more puzzled air, she turned to Mr. Lane to ask, "Is this mind-reading?" "I'm sure I don't know," returned he. "Mr. Gray can best tell what it is." "And the rest of the way to Boston," I continued, ignoring the interruption, "you were elaborating your story. You took the heroine's name from the same line, and had a pun at the climax about the hero's becoming 'lord of May.'" "No," Miss Graham retorted, beginning to enter into the spirit of the situation. "I deny the pun, although I acknowledge the rest. The pun I didn't even think of." "Well, you see I haven't read your manuscript, but I own I fell so low that I put in the pun myself. At least the old gentleman with a scar on his cheek, who sat in the corner of the car, gave you hints for--" "The uncle," broke in Miss Graham, with a gleeful laugh at the remembrance of the oddity of the old gentleman's appearance. "But how in the world did you know?" "Oh, he did me. We evidently had the same mental experience; which proves, I suppose, that we are literary Corsican brothers or something of the sort." "But the great question to be settled is," Mr. Lane observed, bringing in, after some further talk, the editorial consideration, "whose story this really is." "Miss Graham's, by all means," I said instantly. "Hers was first in the field, and if I hadn't impertinently looked over her shoulder, I shouldn't have had any share in it whatever." Miss Graham laughed, showing a delicious dimple, and Mr. Lane, who evidently had no desire to settle the question under discussion, looked inquiringly at her for a response to my words. "You are very generous, Mr. Gray," she answered; "but in the first place my story has never been accepted for the 'Dark Red,' and in the second, as the stories really ought to stand on their merits, I shall certainly not venture to put mine into competition with yours, but prefer to pocket my manuscript and retire." "I fear," was my reply, "that I discover rather a tendency to sarcasm in what you say than any true humility. Of course the first point is one for Mr. Lane to settle."