"Come along," I urged, and off we went. While our boat drifted idly that long, lazy afternoon, we went careering all over the world and I kept doggedly by her side. Every now and then I would make her stop while we had a good look at each other, exploring deep into the old questions, "What are you and what do you want?" "You can't run a motorboat all your life," I reminded her. "What are you going to tackle next?" "Our living-room," she answered. "I'm going to have it done over next month." That took us into house furnishings, and I gave her ideas by the score. I had never thought about this before, but now I thought hard and eagerly--until she brought me up with a jerk, by pityingly murmuring: "What perfectly frightful taste you have. It's funny--because you're an artist--you really write quite beautiful things." "I don't care," I answered grimly. "I can see that living-room----" "So can I," she said cheerfully. "But so long as you like it, that's all there is to be said. You're the one who has to live in it, you know. Now my father likes a room----" And while I looked gloomily over the water she told me what her father liked. * * * * * He came out from the city each evening by train. He refused to use the boat these days, he said he was so infernally busy that he could not spare the time. He brought out stacks of papers and plans which had piled up while he was abroad, and with these he busied himself at night. And though Eleanore from the veranda glanced in at him frequently, she never again caught him looking old. And when she went in to make him stop working he smilingly told her to leave him alone. He smoked many cigars with apparent enjoyment, his lean face wrinkling over the smoke as he turned over plan after plan for the harbor. His manner to me was if anything even kindlier than before. He began calling me "Billy" now. On the last night of my stay he said: "I think you're the man I've been looking for. I've just read your story and you've done exactly what I hoped. You've pictured one spot of efficiency in a whole dreary desert of waste. Come up to my office to-morrow at ten." CHAPTER XV So at last I went up to the tower.