Mary began to search for her latch-key. Splendidly competent though she was, she did not appear to have a regular place for keeping her key, like a man. And Charles wondered if she had quite forgotten that offhand remark of his, the day of his luncheon to Helen Carson, that he was drawing his Line from his life.... "But the men in the story," she was saying--rather mechanically, he thought--"I conclude there must be some, even though you don't mention them. What type do you make your hero?" "Oh!--hero! There isn't any. The hero's the reader." "The reader!--I fear that's too technical for me." He explained: "My--my study develops by the method of 'progressive revelation,' so-called--the principal characters being first set out, of course, with the wrong labels carefully pinned on them. Well, the hero's just the commentator on this development as it takes place, thinking it out to save the reader the trouble." "But--isn't it the theory nowadays that there shouldn't be any commentator?" "Oh, there may be a _theory_!" he retorted, the artist briefly flashing in the man. "However, I comment." They went up the Wings' three steps, and Mary put her key into the lock. "But your hero can't be altogether an abstraction," she insisted, thus engaged--"else how can there be any old-fashioned romance?" The young man's laugh covered an interest in the conversation intense to the point of physical pain. "Really, this won't do. We get it more and more backwards. I haven't even described the story to you right. It's not an old-fashioned anything--primarily--it's not a study of types. No, it's--it's an intellectual autobiography. Do you work on Sundays?" The school-teacher wheeled in her open but inhospitable door, with something like reproach in her eyes, and said: "_No!_" "Then you can't escape me. I'll stay in town this Sunday, and you shall hear it all from the beginning. You--you've brought it on yourself now." The two moderns looked at each other. And the young man in the tall hat was breathing rather hard. "But--wouldn't that disappoint your mother? I know--I've noticed--that you never let anything interfere ..." His look changed perceptibly at that. And still, it was not the son, not the old critic of Egoettes, who answered, slightly chagrined:-- "What time have you to give me, then? Some day in the summer vacation?" Mary Wing's eyes fell to her hand on the door-knob. "I hoped," she said, "that you would come in now." "But your--your work?" "I--thought I would take a holiday to-day." So they went into the house. And Charles stood alone in the Wings' silent hall, slowly pulling off his wedding-gloves.