"That is always the way with men who write," she declared. "They always have all sorts of fault to find with everything." "Have you known a great many literary men?" he asked. There are few things more offensive in conversation, especially in conversation with a lady, than an insistence upon logic. To ask of a woman that she shall make only exact statements is as bad as to require her to be always consistent, and there is small reason for wonder if at this inquiry Miss Calthorpe should show signs of offense. "I do not see what that has to do with the matter," she returned stiffly. "Of course everybody knows about literary men." The sun of the April afternoon smiled over the landscape, and the young man smiled under his mustache, which was too large to be entirely becoming. He glanced up at his companion, who did not smile in return, but only sat there looking extremely pretty, with her flushed cheeks, her dark hair in pretty willful tendrils about her temples, and her dark eyes alight. "Perhaps you have some personal feeling about the book," he said. "You know that it is claimed that a woman's opinion of literature is always half personal feeling." She flushed more deeply yet, and drew herself up as if he were intruding upon unwarrantable matters. "I don't even know who wrote the book," she replied. "Then it is only the book itself that you admire, and not the author?" "Of course it is the book. Haven't I said that I don't even know who the author is? I can't see," she went on somewhat irrelevantly, "why it is that as soon as there is anything that is worth praising you men begin to run it down." He looked as if he were a trifle surprised at her warmth. "Run it down?" he repeated. "Why, I am not running it down. I said that I admired the novel, didn't I?" "But you said that you didn't think it was one of the best," she insisted. "But you might allow a little for individual taste, Miss Calthorpe." "Oh, of course there is a difference in individual tastes, but that has to do with the parts of the story that one likes best. It's nothing at all to do with whether one isn't willing to confess its merits." He broke into a laugh of so much amusement that she contracted her level brows into a frown which made her prettier than ever. "Now you are laughing at me," she said almost pouting. "It is so disappointing to find that I was deceived. Of course I know that there is a good deal of professional jealousy among authors, but I shouldn't have thought--" She perhaps did not like to complete her sentence, and so left it for him to end with a fresh laugh. "I wish I dared tell you how funny that is!" he chuckled.