Ray smiled. “I suppose Shelley ought to be. I was named after him.” When he had said this he thought it rather silly, and certainly superfluous. So he added, “My father was a great reader of him when he was a young man, and I got the benefit of his taste, if it’s a benefit.” “Why, do you hate to be named Shelley?” Mrs. Denton asked. “Oh, no; except as I should hate to be named Shakespeare; it suggests comparisons.” “Yes; but it’s a very pretty name.” As if it recalled him, she said, “My husband was just going out with the twins when you came in with Mr. Kane. He was taking them over to the Park. Do you like cats?” She leaned over and lugged up into her lap a huge Maltese from the further side of her. “My sister doesn’t because they eat sparrows.” She passed her hand slowly down the cat’s smooth flank, which snapped electrically, while the cat shut its eyes to a line of gray light. “If your cat’s fond of sparrows, he ought to come and live with me,” said Ray. “I’ve got a whole colony of them outside of my dormer-window.” Mrs. Denton lifted the cat’s head and rubbed her cheek on it. “Oh, we’ve got plenty of sparrows here, too. Where do you live? Down town? Mr. Kane does.” Ray gave a picturesque account of his foreign hotel; but he had an impression that its strangeness was thrown away upon his hearers, who seemed like children in their contact with the world; it was all so strange that nothing was stranger than another to them. They thought what he told them of life in Midland as queer as life in New York. The talk went on without sequence or direction, broken with abrupt questions and droll comments; and they laughed a good deal. They spoke of poems and of dreams. Ray told of a fragment of a poem he had made in a dream, and repeated it; they thought it was fine, or at least Mrs. Denton said she did. Her sister did not talk much, but she listened, and now and then she threw in a word. She sat against the light, and her face was in shadow to Ray, and this deepened his sense of mystery in her; her little head, so distinctly outlined, was beautiful. Her voice, which was so delicate and thin, had a note of childish innocence in it. Mrs. Denton cooed deep and low. She tried to make her sister talk more, and tell this and that. The girl did not seem afraid or shy, but only serious. Several times they got back to books, and at one of these times it appeared that she knew of Ray’s manuscript, and that it was going through the hands of the readers. “And what is the name of your story?” Mrs. Denton asked, and before he could tell her she said, “Oh, yes; I forgot,” and he knew that they must have talked of it together. He wondered if Miss Hughes had read it. “Talking of names,” Mrs. Denton went on, “I think my sister’s got the queerest one: Peace. Isn’t it a curious name?” “It’s a beautiful name,” said Ray. “The Spanish give it a great deal, I believe.”