"Then I know you have. Tell me, is he living? is he still single? do you expect to marry him?" She closed her mouth tightly and I knew no way to open it. "I am such a foolish fellow!" I added. "Does it surprise you to learn that? I don't want you to love any one, or even to think of any one while you are with me. I want you to like me very much indeed." She turned her face toward me and surveyed me leisurely with those blue-gray eyes. "I do like you," she said, kindly, "but--" "You think I demand too much for my twenty dollars a week," I said, with an attempt to be merry. "I know I do. I realize that my contract with you was for typewriting services. There is no doubt you can hold me to that bond if you so elect. All I want to say is, I am like most contractors--and mean to better my bargain, if I can." "What do you want?" she asked, in clear, distinct tones. "We have agreed not to lie to each other. What do you want?" I rose and looked out upon the sea. A tiny sail was visible in the distance. "I want a closer friendship with you," I replied, after studying the form of words. "I think we are pretty close friends already," she said. "I would not have believed, had I been told by some fortune-teller in New York, that in ten days we would be on such perfectly intimate terms." I resumed my seat and stretched my arms above my head. "Why, this--this is nothing!" I said. "I was afraid you would take that view of it," she answered, soberly, "and I hope you will permit me to resume the position called for in what you term our 'contract.'" I was alarmed by her words and the way she spoke them. She might take a notion to carry that idea into effect, and what a dull existence I would have then. "You certainly agreed to act as a 'companion' to me," I reminded her. "And though I have been much more than that, you are still discontented! I have acted as if I had known you for years; in fact, that is exactly the way I feel. You may think me forward--I fear you do--but I have only tried to be natural. You talk to me as to a friend; I reply in the same strain. You take my hand in yours; I do not withdraw it. You call me to arrange a tie; I come as freely as if you were my brother. My head aches; I ask you into my chamber, lie down and submit to your manipulations with the cologne. If all this means nothing to you, as you say, it means very much to me. It means that I like you, trust you, believe you what you claimed to be--when you first told me of this plan--a gentleman." She had put me in the dock and was reading a sort of left-handed indictment, to which I had no intention of pleading guilty.