“I am as well as a person can be,” I replied, rubbing my eyes in confusion, “who suddenly finds himself two hundred and fifty miles away from the spot where, a half-hour before, he had lain down to rest.” Miss Andrews laughed. “You see how it is yourself,” she said. “See how what is myself?” I queried. “To be the puppet of a person who—writes,” she answered. “And have I become that?” I asked. “You have,” she smiled. “That’s why you are here.” The idea made me nervous, and I pinched my arm to see whether I was there or not. The result was not altogether reassuring. I never felt the pinch, and, try as I would, I couldn’t make myself feel it. “Excuse me,” I said, “for deviating a moment from the matter in hand, but have you a hat-pin?” “No,” she answered; “but I have a brooch, if that will serve your purpose. What do you want it for?” “I wish to run it into my arm for a moment,” I explained. “It won’t help you any,” she answered, smiling divinely. “I must have a word with you; all the hat-pins in the world shall not prevent me, now that you are here.” “Well, wait a minute, I beg of you,” I implored. “You intimated a moment ago that I was a puppet in the hands of some author. Whose? I’ve a reputation to sustain, and shall not give myself up willingly, unless I am sure that that person will not trifle with my character.” “Exactly my position,” said she. “As I said, you can now understand how it is yourself. But I will tell you in whose hands you are now—you are in mine. Surely if you had the right to send me tearing down Bellevue Avenue at Newport behind a runaway horse, and then pursue me in spirit to the Profile House, I have the right to bring you here, and I have accordingly done so.” For a woman’s, her logic was surprisingly convincing. She certainly had as much right to trifle with my comfort as I had to trifle with hers. “You are right, Miss Andrews,” I murmured, meekly. “Pray command me as you will—and deal gently with the erring.” “I will treat you far better than you treated me,” she said. “So have no fear—although I have been half minded at times to revenge myself upon you for that runaway. I could make you dreadfully uncomfortable, for when I take my pen in hand my imagination in the direction of the horrible is something awful. I shall be merciful, however, for I believe in the realistic idea, and I will merely make use of the power my pen possesses over you to have you act precisely as you would if you were actually here.” “Then I am not here?” I queried. “What do you think?” she asked, archly. I was about to say that if I weren’t, I wished most heartily that I were; but I remembered fortunately that it would never do for me to flirt with Stuart Harley’s heroine, so I contented myself with saying, boldly, “I don’t know what to think.” Miss Andrews looked at me for a moment, and then, reaching out her hand, took mine, pressed it, and relinquished it, saying, “You are a loyal friend indeed.”