"I'll tell you what I've never told any one--but my teacher; I've taken lessons with him for a year. He is an instructor in the technique of the short story, and has turned out quite a few successful magazine writers. He believes that I have talent. I have been studying over at the University to the same end--English, biology, psychology, sociology. I'm determined not to start as a raw amateur. Oh! Perhaps I have made a mistake in telling you. You may be one of those men that are repelled by intellectual women!" "Not a bit of it. Don't belong to that class of duffers anyway. I don't like masculine women, or hard women--run from a lot of our girls that are so hard a diamond wouldn't cut 'em. But I've got an elder sister--she's thirty now--who's the cleverest woman I ever met, although she doesn't pretend to do anything. She won't bother with any but clever and exceptional people--has something of a salon. My parents hate it--she lives alone in a flat in London--but they can't help it. My grandfather Doubleton liked her a lot and left her two thousand a year. I wish you knew her. She is charming and feminine, as much so as any of those I met at the ball; and so are many of the women that go to her flat--" "Don't you think I am feminine?" asked Gora irrisistibly. He had a way of making her feel, quite abruptly, as if she had run a needle under her fingernail. Once more he turned to her his detached but keen young eyes. "Well ... not exactly in the sense I mean. You look too much the fighter ... but that may be purely the result of circumstances," he added hastily: the strange eyes under their heavy down-drawn browns were lowering at him. "You are not masculine, no, not a bit." Once more Miss Dwight curled her upper lip. "I wonder if you would have said the first part of that if you had met me at the Hofer ball and I had worn a gown of flame-colored chiffon and satin, and my hair marcelled like every other woman present--except those embalmed relics of the seventies, who, I have heard, rise from the grave whenever a great ball is given, and appear in a built-up red-brown wig.... And a string of pearls round my throat? My neck and arms are quite good; although I've never possessed an evening gown, I know I'd look quite well in one ... my best." He laughed. "It does make a difference. I wish you had been there. I am sure you are as good a dancer as you are a pal. But still ... I think I should have recognized the fighter, even if you had been born in the California equivalent for the purple. I fancy you would have found some cause or other to get your teeth into once in a while. Tell me, don't you rather like the idea of taking Life by the throat and forcing it to deliver?" "I wonder? ... perhaps ... but that does not mitigate my resentment that I am on the outside of everything when I belong on the in. I should never have been forced to strive after what is mine by natural right."