Mrs. Harbinger and Alice went off to the stables, and the pair left behind exchanged casual comments upon the day, the carriages driving up, the smart spring gowns of the ladies, and that sort of verbal thistledown which makes up ordinary society chit-chat. A remark which Fairfield made on the attire of a dashing young woman was the means of bringing the talk around again to the subject which had been touched upon between them on the previous afternoon. "I suppose," Miss Calthorpe observed, "that a man who writes stories has to know about clothes. You do write stories, I am sure, Mr. Fairfield." He smiled, and traced a crack in the piazza floor with his stick. "Which means, of course," he said, "that you have never read any of them. That is so far lucky for me." "Why is it lucky?" "Because you might not have liked them." "But on the other hand I might have liked them very much." "Well, perhaps there is that chance. I don't know, however, that I should be willing to run the risk. What kind of a story do you like?" "I told you that yesterday, Mr. Fairfield. If you really cared for my opinion you would remember." "You said that you liked 'Love in a Cloud.' Is that what you mean?" "Then you do remember," she remarked with an air of satisfaction. "Perhaps it was only because you liked the book yourself." "Why not believe that it was because I put so much value on your opinion?" "Oh, I am not so vain as that, Mr. Fairfield," she cried. "If you remember, it was not on my account." He laughed without replying, and continued the careful tracing of the crack in the floor as if the occupation were the pleasantest imaginable. May watched him for a moment, and then with the semblance of pique she turned her shoulder toward him. The movement drew his eyes, and he suddenly stopped his occupation to straighten up apologetically. "I was thinking," he said, "what would be the result of your reading such stories of mine as have been published--there have been a few, you know, in the magazines--if you were to test them by the standard of 'Love in a Cloud.' I'm afraid they might not stand it." She smiled reassuringly, but perhaps with a faint suggestion of condescension. "One doesn't expect all stories to be as good as the best," she observed. Fairfield turned his face away for a quick flash of a grin to the universe in general; then with perfect gravity he looked again at his companion. "I am afraid," he said, "that even the author of 'Love in a Cloud' wouldn't expect so much of you as that you should call his story the best." "I do call it the best," she returned, a little defiantly. "Don't you?" "No," he said slowly, "I couldn't go so far as that." "But you spoke yesterday as if you admired it." "But that isn't the same thing as saying that there is nothing better." Miss Calthorpe began to tap her small foot impatiently.