“She deserves to be punished,” I thought to myself, as Harley went dejectedly out of the room. “And there is no kind of punishment for a woman like that so galling to her soul as to find herself in the hands of a relentless despot who forces her this way and that, according to his whim. I’d like to play Petrucio to her Katherine for five minutes. She’d soon find out that I’m not a realist bound by a creed to which I must adhere. Whatever I choose to do I can do without violating my conscientious scruples, because I haven’t any conscientious scruples in literature. And, by Jove, I’ll do it! I’ll take Miss Marguerite Andrews in hand myself this very afternoon, and I’ll put her through a course of training that will make her rue the day she ever trifled with Stuart Harley—and when he takes her up again she’ll be as meek as Moses.” Strong in my belief that I could bring the young woman to terms, I went to my desk and tried my hand at a story, with Miss Andrews as its heroine, and I was not particular about being realistic either. Neither did I go off into any trances in search of heroes and villains. I did what Harley could not do. I brought the _New York_ back to port that very day, and despatched Robert Osborne, the despised lover of the first tale, to Newport. “She shall have him whether she likes him or not,” said I, gritting my teeth determinedly; “and she won’t know whether she loves him or Count Bonetti best; and she’ll promise to marry both of them; and she shall go to Venice in August, despite her uncompromising refusal to do so for Harley; and she shall meet Balderstone there, and, no matter what her opinion of him or of his literary work, she shall be fascinated by the story I’ll have him write, and under the spell of that fascination she shall promise to marry him also; whereupon the Willards will turn up and take her to Heidelberg, where I’ll have her meet the hero she couldn’t wait for at the Howlett dance, the despised Professor, and she shall promise to be his wife likewise; and finally I’ll put her on board a steamer at Southampton, bound for New York, with Mrs. Corwin and the twins; and the second day out, when she is feeling her very worst, all four of her fiancés will turn up at the same time beside her chair. Then I shall leave her to get out of her trouble the best way she can. I imagine, after she has had a taste of my literary regimen, she’ll quite fall in love with the Harley method, and behave herself as a heroine should.”