visitor came in, leaving the door ajar, and after a minute during
which, to help her, he charged her with the purpose of telling him
that he ought to be ashamed to send her down such rubbish, she
recovered herself sufficiently to stammer out that his song was
exactly what she had been looking for and that after reading it she
had been seized with an extraordinary, irresistible impulse--that of
thanking him for it in person and without delay.

"It was the impulse of a kind nature," he said, "and I can't tell you
what pleasure you give me."

She declined to sit down, and evidently wished to appear to have come
but for a few seconds. She looked confusedly at the place in which
she found herself, and when her eyes met his own they struck him as
anxious and appealing. She was evidently not thinking of his song,
though she said three or four times over that it was beautiful.
"Well, I only wanted you to know, and now I must go," she added; but
on his hearthrug she lingered with such an odd helplessness that he
felt almost sorry for her.

"Perhaps I can improve it if you find it doesn't go," said Baron.
"I'm so delighted to do anything for you I can."

"There may be a word or two that might be changed," she answered,
rather absently. "I shall have to think it over, to live with it a
little. But I like it, and that's all I wanted to say."

"Charming of you. I'm not a bit busy," said Baron.

Again she looked at him with a troubled intensity, then suddenly she