Paula knew that Quentin Charter was crying out for his mate of fire. She remembered that she had strangely felt his strength before there were any letters, but she could not deny that it since had become a greater and more intimate thing--her tower, white and heroic, cutting clean through the films of distance, and suggesting a vast, invisible city at its base. That she was the bright answer in the East for such a tower was incredible. She could send a song over on the wings of the morning--make it shine like ivory into the eyes of the new day, but she dared not think of herself as a corresponding fixture. A man like Charter could form a higher woman out of dreams and letter-pages than the world could mold for him from her finest clays. Always she said this--and forgot that the man was clay. A pair of dreamers, truly, and yet there was a difference in their ideals. If Charter's vision of her lifted higher, it was also flexible to contain a human woman. As for hers--Paula had builded a tower. True, there were moments of flying fog in which she did not see it, but clean winds quickly brushed away the obscurations, and not a remnant clung. When seen at all, her tower was pure white and undiminished. Of necessity there were reactions. His familiarity with the petty intensities of the average man often startled her. He seemed capable of dropping into the parlance of any company, not as one who had listened and memorized, but as an old familiar who had served time in all societies. In the new aspect of personal letters, his book revealed a comprehension of women--that dismayed. Of course, his printed work was filled with such stuff as her letters were made of, but between a book and a letter, there is the same difference of appeal as the lines read by an actor, however gifted, are cold compared to a friend's voice. Though she wondered at Charter giving his time to write such letters to her, this became very clear, if his inclination were anything like her own to answer them. All the thinking of her days formed itself into compressed messages for him; and all the best of her sprang to her pen under his address. The effort then became to repress, to keep her pages within bounds, and the ultimate effort was to wait several days before writing again. His every sentence suggested pleasure in writing; and as a matter of fact, he repressed very little.... Was it through letters like hers in his leisure months that Charter amassed his tremendous array of poignant details; was it through such, that he reared his imposing ranges of feminine understanding? This was a question requiring a worldlier woman than Paula long to hold in mind. In the man's writing, regarded from her critical training, there was no betrayal of the literary clerk dependent upon data.