hospitable as I can."

"I've felt," he said, "that you can--can see through things; that you can
balance them, that you get at all sides, and--"

She had been reading Napoleon's letters this very afternoon.

"Full squared?" she interrupted quizzically.

"As the Great Emperor said," he answered. "A woman sees farther than a
man, and if she has judgment as well, she is the best prophet in the
world."

"It sounds distinctly like a compliment," she answered. "You are trying
to break that square!"

She was mystified; he was different from any man she had ever
entertained. She was not half sure she liked it. Yet, if he were in
very truth a prince--she thought of his debut in flowered waistcoat,
panama hat, and enamelled boots!--she should take this confidence as a
compliment; if he were a barber, she could not resent it; she could not
waste wit or time; she could not even, in extremity, call the servant to
show the barber out; and in any case she was too comfortably interested
to worry herself with speculation.

He was very much in earnest. "I want to ask you," he said, "what is the
thing most needed to make a great idea succeed."

"I have never had a great idea," she replied.