“Still you asked me about Nagar, though really there is nothing to say, except that he is good to have in the house.” “I think I’ll let him come and hear the reading, if he’s willing.” “Good,” said Miss Claes. “We will listen in this room, where the story came to be.” * * * * * ... Nagar sat in a straight chair, in the aisle between the cot and the wall. Pidge sat by the window before her machine. Miss Claes lay on the cot with her head under the light that Pidge read by, and away they went. There was an hour or more in the early afternoon when both Miss Claes and her helper could escape from below, and two hours, at least, after nine in the evening--this for three days. Pidge was fagged and ill and frightfully scared. She would begin hoarsely, and for pages in each reading her cold in the head was an obstruction hard to pass; besides, she felt she was boring them horribly and that all the massed effects of her pages dithered away into nothing or worse. But a moment came in each of the six sessions, when the last monster of the mind’s outer darkness was passed. And then, for Pidge, at least, knighthood rose resplendent; days became stately, indeed, and chivalry bloomed again. At such times the dark gleaming hair of Miss Claes--which Pidge could have touched with her hand, became the tresses of Madelaine Rivernais herself, and a little back to the right in the deep shadows, the face of the Easterner there took on the magic and glamour of Lambill’s own. The vineyards of old France stretched beyond from their balcony; the rivers of France flowed below. The lance of the Rivernais was won back heroically and human hearts opened to the drama of love and life. But on the last night of the reading, after the self-consciousness was passed and all was going well, Pidge, glancing down to Miss Claes’ head under the light, saw gray for the first time, in the depths of her hair. It hadn’t been combed with any purpose of hiding. The outer strands were coal black, the strands beneath had turned. This discovery had the peculiar effect of changing everything around in Pidge’s mind in the moments that followed. She couldn’t get into the story as before; and in the very last pages of her reading, a face persistently crowded in between her mind’s eye and the rapid flow of the story at its end--a long, humorless complacent face--the high-browed, self-willed and self-thrilled face of her father. It was as if he were reading and not herself; reading with rising expectation, drinking in the silent praise, as if he had done the writing himself and loved it well. So effectually was Pidge mastered by this apparition of her own mind, that the last pages of the manuscript were spoiled entirely. The light had gone out of her and she said hastily, as the final page was turned down: “I know how kind you are, but please don’t try to tell me anything to-night. Not a word, please!”