'The idea that Thought makes a network everywhere about the world in which we all are caught, and that it's a positive duty, therefore, to think beauty--as much a duty as washing one's face and hands, because what you think _touches_ others all day long, and all night long too-- in sleep.' 'Only she couldn't write it?' asked Rogers. His tongue was like a thick wedge of unmanageable wood in his mouth. He felt like a man who hears another spoil an old, old beautiful story that he knows himself with intimate accuracy. 'She can telegraph, she says, but she can't write!' 'An expensive talent,' thought the practical Minks. 'Oh, she's very rich, apparently. But isn't it odd? You see, she thought it vividly, played it, lived it. Why, she tells me she even had a Cave in her mountains where lost thoughts and lost starlight collected, and that she made a kind of Pattern with them to represent the Net. She showed me a drawing of it, for though she can't write, she paints quite well. But the odd thing is that she claims to have thought out the main idea of my own story years and years ago with the feeling that some day her idea was bound to reach some one who _would_ write it---' 'Almost a case of transference,' put in Minks. 'A fairy tale, yes, isn't it!' 'Married?' asked Rogers, with a gulp, as they reached the door. But apparently he had not said it out loud, for there was no reply. He tried again less abruptly. It required almost a physical effort to drive his tongue and frame the tremendous question. 'What a fairy story for her children! How _they_ must love it!' This time he spoke so loud that Minks started and looked up at him. 'Ah, but she has no children,' his cousin said. They went upstairs, and the introductions to Monsieur and Madame Michaud began, with talk about rooms and luggage. The mist was over him once more. He heard Minks saying:-- 'Oui, je comprongs un poo,' and the clatter of heavy boots up and down the stairs, ... and then found himself washing his hands in stinging hot water in his cousin's room. 'The children simply adore her already,' he heard, 'and she won Mother's confidence at the very start. They can't manage her long name. They just call her the Little Countess--die kleine Grafin. She's doing a most astonishing work in Austria, it seems, with children... the Montessori method, and all that....' 'By George, now; is it possible? Bourcelles accepted her at once then?' 'She accepted Bourcelles rather--took it bodily into herself--our poverty, our magic boxes, our democratic intimacy, and all the rest; it was just as though she had lived here with us always. And she kept asking who Orion was--that's you, of course--and why you weren't here---' 'And the Den too?' asked Rogers, with a sudden trembling in his heart, yet knowing well the answer.