"Why, I'm the only one," she said, inadequately, glancing round the large, airy-looking room, with its profusion of casts and sketches and scraps of costume and old armor about the walls. "I thought from your note, you know, that there would be--be others," she went on, buttoning and unbuttoning the white glove on her slender wrist. He asked her to be seated. "And won't you let me take your wraps?" he said, still quite impassively. "Thank you, no," she answered coldly. "I can stay for just a minute or two." "But this is important," he protested, still waiting dominantly, "and I fear I may detain you." She surrendered them reluctantly, and seated herself in the chair stiffly, uncomfortably. She wondered why her heart should be beating at such a rate. But she looked out at him with coldly inquiring eyes, and with just a touch of indignation in the down-drawn corners of her thin lips. "The truth is, Miss Vaughan," he began slowly, "I want you to help me out of a very great difficulty." "Concerning what?" she asked nervously. She was sitting in the full light of one of the broad-silled windows of the studio, and the afternoon sun worried her eyes. She tried to shade them with her daintily gloved hand. "How long have you been writing, Miss Vaughan?" "Almost two years; two _whole_ years, I mean. It's that long since I really wrote my first book. Why?" Her eyebrows lifted superciliously. "Would you mind telling me the name of that first book?" "Of course not. It was The Silver Poppy." The sun still worried her eyes, and she moved her chair uneasily. "That was your only book?" "Yes, so far." He reached over to the table beside him. "Did you write that book alone--I mean without help or guidance?" "Quite alone!" she said distinctly. He picked up a book from the table. It was Hartley's copy of The Silver Poppy. A mounting wave of crimson swept over Cordelia's face, leaving it, in turn, almost a dead white. "One writes nothing quite alone," she added, smiling hastily. "I _did_ have a little help, perhaps, but it was very little!" "That's better. Could you tell me just how much?" "Every author, I think, absorbs things that--But am I a prisoner before the bar?" she suddenly flashed back at him angrily. Then she saw his quiet smile, and an answering smile came to her own pale lips. "Or is it a--a joke?" she added. "No," he said, "I'm afraid it's almost a tragedy." "I don't understand," she said feebly. "Perhaps I can help you to," he answered. "I have, for the first time, just finished reading The Silver Poppy. Miss Vaughan, The Silver Poppy was not written by you!" She gave a little smothered cry of indignation, and started to her feet. Repellier's stern eyes were looking closely, challengingly, into hers, and she sank back in her chair again. Then she laughed a pitiable little laugh, and a touch of color came into her pale lips.