She turned and again her eyes met mine, and again for some reason or other we smiled. "All right," I assented gravely, "I'll buy a hoe and start right in." "That's it, hoe yourself all up. Get as far down as you can remember. Dig up Belle and Sam, and Sue and your mother and father. Then take a hoe to Paris and find out why you loved it so, and why you hate the harbor. Be sure you get all the hate there is, it makes such interesting reading. Besides, it may be just what you need--it may take the hate all out of your system." "Who'll print it?" I demanded. "Oh, some magazine," she said. "Do you think this kind of thing would interest their readers?" "It would interest _me_----" "Thank you. I'll tell the editors that." "You'll do no such thing," she said severely. "You'll tell the magazine editors, please, that I'm only one of thousands of girls who are getting sick and tired of the happy, cheery little tales they print for our special benefit. It's just about time they got over the habit of thinking of us as sweet, young things and gave us some roots we can grow on." Another modern girl, I thought. "Do you, too, want to vote?" I asked her, with a fine, indulgent irony. "Some day I do," she answered. And then she added with placid scorn, "When I've learned all the political wisdom that _you_ have to teach me." And as if that were a good place to stop, she rose from her seat. "The others seem to have left us," she said. "I think I'd better be going home." "Wait a minute, please," I cried. "When am I going to hear about you--and your side of this dismal body of water?" She looked back at me serenely. "Wait till you've got yours all written down," she replied. "You see mine might only mix you up. Mine is so much pleasanter. Good night," she added softly. CHAPTER VI Until late that night, and again the next day at my desk down in the warehouse, my thoughts kept drifting back to our talk. With a glow of surprise I found I remembered not only every word she had said, but the tones of her voice as she said it, the changing expressions on her face and in her smiling gray-blue eyes. Her picture rose so vividly at times it was uncanny. "What do you think of her?" asked Sue. "Mighty little," I replied. I did not care to discuss her with Sue, for I had not liked Sue's tone at all. But how little I'd learned about Eleanor's life. Where did she live? I didn't know. When I had hinted at coming to see her she had smilingly put me off. What was this pleasant harbor of hers? "Wait till you've got yours all written down," she had said, and had told me nothing whatever. Yes, I thought disgustedly, I was quite a smart young man. Here I had spent two years in Paris learning how to draw people out. What had she let me draw out of her? What hadn't I let her draw out of me? I wondered how much I had told that girl.