"Yes," said the girl before he could continue. "I did read it. And it hurt me. It was so terribly insincere. The man had talent who wrote it, but he seemed to say: 'It's all a great big joke. I don't believe in these people myself. I've just created them to make them dance for you. Don't be fooled--it's only a novel.' I don't like that sort of thing. I want a writer really to mean all he says from the bottom of his heart." Mr. Magee bit his lip. His determination to claim the authorship of _The Lost Limousine_ was quite gone. "I want him to make me feel with his people," the girl went on seriously. "Perhaps I can explain by telling you of something that happened to me once. It was while I was at college. There was a blind girl in my class and one night I went to call on her. I met her in the corridor of her dormitory. Somebody had just brought her back from an evening lecture, and left her there. She unlocked her door, and we went in. It was pitch dark in the room--the first thing I thought of was a light. But she--she just sat down and began to talk. She had forgot to light the gas." The girl paused, her eyes very wide, and it seemed to Mr. Magee that she shivered slightly. "Can you imagine it?" she asked. "She chatted on--quite cheerfully as I remember it. And I--I stumbled round and fell into a chair, cold and trembly and sick with the awful horror of blindness, for the first time in my life. I thought I had imagined before what it was to be blind--just by shutting my eyes for a second. But as I sat there in the blackness, and listened to that girl chatter, and realized that it had never occurred to her to light a lamp--then for the first time--I knew--I knew." Again she stopped, and Mr. Magee, looking at her, felt what he had never experienced before--a thrill at a woman's near presence. "That's what I ask of a writer," she said, "that he make me feel for his people as I felt for that girl that night. Am I asking too much? It need not be for one who is enmeshed in tragedy--it may be for one whose heart is as glad as a May morning. But he must make me feel. And he can't do that if he doesn't feel himself, can he?" William Hallowell Magee actually hung his head. "He can't," he confessed softly. "You're quite right. I like you immensely--more than I can say. And even if you feel you can't trust me, I want you to know that I'm on your side in whatever happens at Baldpate Inn. You have only to ask, and I am your ally." "Thank you," she answered. "I may be very glad to ask. I shall remember." She rose and moved toward the stairs. "We had better disperse now. The rocking-chair fleet will get us if we don't watch out." Her small slipper was on the first step of the stair, when they heard a door slammed shut, and the sound of steps on the bare floor of the dining-room. Then a husky voice called "Bland".