"What! To have your own sister hear what you’ve written?" There was a short silence. The word "sister" was meant to be reassuring to both. To use it came instinctively to her as an inspiration, partly because she had vaguely felt that some confirmation of such matter-of-fact relationship would put them a little more perfectly at their ease with each other. For they had not been entirely at their ease. Both were subtly aware of that—she had first betrayed it by her offered hand instead of the friendly and sisterly kiss which had been a matter of course until now. "Come," she said, gaily, "be a good child and read the pretty story to little sister." She sat down on the edge of his bed; he, already seated at his desk, frowned at the pile of manuscript before him. "I’d rather talk," he said. "About what?" "Anything. Honestly, Steve, I’ll let you see it when it’s typed. But I rather hate to show anything until it’s done—I don’t like to have people see the raw edges and the machinery." "I’m not ’people.’ How horrid. Also, it makes a difference when a girl is not only your sister but also somebody who intends to devote her life to artistic self-expression. You can read your story to that kind of girl, I should hope!" "Haven’t you given that up?" "Given up what?" "That mania for self-expression, as you call it." "Of course not." "What do you think you want to do?" he asked uneasily. "Jim, you are entirely too patronizing. I don’t ’think’ I want to do anything: but I _know_ I desire to find some medium for self-expression and embrace it as a profession." That rather crushed him for a moment. Then: "There’ll be time enough to start that question when you graduate——" "It is _not_ a question. I intend to express myself some day. And you might as well reconcile yourself to that idea." "Suppose you haven’t anything worth expressing?" "Are you teasing?" She flushed slightly. "Oh, yes, I suppose I am teasing you. But, Steve, neither father nor I want to see you enter any unconventional profession. It’s no good for a girl unless she is destined for it by a talent that amounts to genius. If you have that, it ought to show by the time you graduate——" "You make me simply furious, Jim," she retorted impatiently. "These few months at college have taught me _something_. And, for one thing, I’ve learned that a girl has exactly as much right as a man to live her own life in her own way, unfettered by worn-out conventions and unhampered by man’s critical opinions concerning her behaviour. "The dickens," he remarked, and whistled softly. "And, further," she continued warmly, "I am astonished that in this age, when the entire world tacitly admits that woman is man’s absolute equal in every respect, that you apparently still harbour old-fashioned, worn-out and silly notions. You are very far out of date, my charming brother." "What notions?" he demanded.