Paula had steeled herself for this. There were matters which she must learn before making a decision which his telegram called for. Her mind held her inexorably to the work at hand, though her heart would have faltered in the thick cloud of misgivings. "Yes, there is much in his letters--so much that I can't quite adjust him to the name you twice designated. Remember, you once before called him that--when I didn't know that you were speaking of Quentin Charter." "I'll swear this much also," Selma Cross said savagely, "he has found your letters worth while." "Is that to the point?" "Why, yes Paula," the other replied, darting a queer look at her. "If I am to be held to a point--it is--because, as a writer, he uses what is of value. He makes women mad about him, and then goes back to his garret, and sobers up enough to write an essay or a story out of his recent first-hand studies in passion." "You say he was drinking--when you knew him?" "Enough to kill another man. It didn't seem to make his temperament play less magically. He was never silly or limp, either in mind or body, but he must have been burned to a cinder inside. He intimated that he didn't dare to go on exhibition any day before mid-afternoon." Paula, very pale, bent forward and asked calmly as she could: "I wish you would tell me _just_ what Quentin Charter did to make you think of him always--in connection with that name." "On condition that you will recall occasionally that you have a plate before you--also supper, which won't stay hot." Selma Cross spoke with some tension, for she felt that the other was boring rather pointedly, and it was not her time of day for confessions. Still, the quality of her admiration for Paula Linster involved large good nature. ".... Extraordinary, as it may seem, my dear, Charter made me believe that he was passionately in love. I was playing Sarah Blixton in _Caller Herrin_,--my first success. It was a very effective minor part and an exceptionally good play. It took his eye--my work especially--and he arranged to meet me. Felix Larch, by the way, took care of this formality for him. Incidentally, I didn't know Felix Larch, but my cue was greatly to be honored. Charter told me that Larch said I was peculiar for an actress and worth watching, because I had a brain.... The man, Charter, was irresistible in a wine-room. I say in a wine-room, not that his talk was of the sort you might expect there, but that he was drinking--and was at home nowhere else. You see, he has a working knowledge of every port in the world, and to me it seemed--of every book. Then, he has a sharp, swift, colorful way of expressing himself.... I told you, Villiers was away. I couldn't realize that it was merely a new type Charter found in me.... We were together when I wasn't at work. It was a wild and wonderful fortnight--to me. He used to send notes in the forenoon--things he thought of, when he couldn't sleep, he said.