But Miss Macks did not stop to analyze this; she was too much occupied with her own subject. "I will begin immediately, then," she said. "It will be rather long; but if you are to understand me you ought, of course, to know the whole." "My chair is very comfortable," replied Noel, placing his hat and gloves on the sofa near him, and taking an easy position with his head back. Miss Macks thought that he ought to have said, "The longer it is, the more interesting," or something of that sort. She had already described him to her mother as "not over-polite. Not rude in the least, you know--as far as possible from that; wonderfully smooth-spoken; but yet, somehow--awfully indifferent." However, he was Raymond Noel; and that, not his politeness or impoliteness, was her point. "To begin with, then, Mr. Noel, a year ago I had never read one word you have written; I had never even heard of you. I suppose you think it strange that I should tell you this so frankly; but, in the first place, it will give you a better idea of my point of view; and, in the second, I feel a friendly interest in your taking measures to introduce your writings into the community where I lived. It is a very intelligent community. Naturally, a writer wants his articles read. What else does he write them for?" "Perhaps a little for his own entertainment," suggested her listener. "Oh no! He would never take so much trouble just for that." "On the contrary, many would take any amount just for that. Successfully to entertain one's self--that is one of the great successes of life." Miss Macks gazed at him; she had a very direct gaze. "This is just mere talk," she said, not impatiently, but in a business-like tone. "We shall never get anywhere if you take me up so. It is not that your remarks are not very cultivated and interesting, and all that, but simply that I have so much to tell you." "Perhaps I can be cultivated and interesting dumbly. I will try." "You are afraid I am going to be diffuse; I see that. So many women are diffuse! But I shall not be, because I have been thinking for six months just what I should say to you. It was very lucky that I went with Mrs. Lawrence to that reception where I met you. But if it had not happened as it did I should have found you out all the same. I should have looked for your address at all the bankers', and if it was not there I should have inquired at all the hotels. But it was delightful luck getting hold of you in this way almost the very minute I enter Rome!" She spoke so simply and earnestly that Noel did not say that he was immensely honored, and so forth, but merely bowed his acknowledgments.