"I want to go back to town with you," she answered him, with a little catch in her voice. "I feel so far away from you and--and IT, up here." "You shall," he answered, and turned toward Mrs. Farraday, who was coming across the grass towards them with a huge sheaf of myrtles for his car flower-baskets in her arms. "I wonder if you'll let me take my author back to town in a hurry to-night, Mater Farraday," he pleaded, with the affectionate smile in both his voice and eyes that he had learned to use in coaxing her since the days ten years ago when she had begun to mother him along with big Dennis. "I--I sorter--sorter need her." Mrs. Farraday looked at them both with a keenness under the affection in her glance, and then laughed merrily. "Yes, go with him, Patricia," she commanded. "I have lived through the week before the presentation of five plays for Van, and I think that it is only just that you should share that ordeal with me. He's impossible, and demands--everything. I gave him a perfectly new and wonderful hat that cost a hundred and ten dollars for the second scene of 'Dear Geraldine' right off my head at the dress rehearsal, and 'Miss Cut-up' did her dances on one of my most choice Chinese rugs. Now he's taking you from me. But go!" "Here's your wrap, still in the car, so hop in," commanded Mr. Vandeford hurriedly, as though he feared that Mrs. Farraday would withdraw her sympathetic permission. "Good-night, and thank you!" "Good-night, you two--two dear children," returned Mrs. Farraday, as she saw them off, after tenderly embracing Miss Adair and making plans for their future meeting. "How _lovely_ it would be!" she murmured to herself, with a lack of definition, as she went back to the stately house behind the tree, where windows were beginning to glow. For a long time the producer and his author were silent. "I hate it--and I love it," Miss Adair finally said, with her soft, slurring voice lowered almost to a whisper as Valentine sped them along the country road perfumed and dusky with the early night, though a silvery radiance proclaimed a chaperoning moon as imminent. "That is the proper way for an author to feel about a play one week before the opening," Mr. Vandeford assured her, with a laugh keyed to match her declaration. "It shows an entire sympathy with the poor producer." "Suppose, just suppose, that the producer had been anybody but you and I had had to stand all--" Words failed Miss Adair in imaging her plight as author to another producer than Mr. Vandeford.