She glanced at him appealingly.  She had tried to tell this simple story to so many people, for she had many friends, and yet no one had ever really understood.  Some had told her she was spoiled, more, that there was no use in trying to change her life because she would soon marry; most of them had advised her to marry and find out what real trouble was.  Now, as she spoke she saw that this strange young man from the sea not only understood her discontent, but thought it natural, almost commonplace.

She poured it all out.  “Only the worst thing,” she ended, “is that I’m not really any good.  There isn’t anything else that I know how to do.”

“I doubt that,” he answered, and she began to doubt it, too.  “I’m sure there are lots of things you could do if you put your mind on it.  Did you ever try to write?”

Now, indeed, she felt sure that he was gifted with powers more than mortal—­to have guessed this secret which no one else had ever suspected.  She colored deeply.

“Why, yes,” she answered, “I think I can—­a little, only I’ve so little education.”

“So little education?”

“Yes, I belong to the cultivated classes—­three languages and nothing solid.”

“Well, you know, three languages seem pretty solid to me,” said Ben, who had wrestled very unsuccessfully with the French tongue.  “You speak three languages, and let me see, you know a good deal about painting and poetry and jade and Chinese porcelains?”

She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.  “Oh, of course everyone knows about those things, but what good are they?”

They were a good deal of good to Ben.  He pressed on toward his final goal.  “What is your attitude toward fairies?” he asked, and Miss Cox would have heard in his tone a faint memory of his voice when he engaged a new office-boy.

Her attitude toward fairies was perfectly satisfactory, and he showed so much appreciation that she went on and told him her great secret in full.  She had once had something published and been paid money for it—­fifteen dollars—­and probably never in her life had she spoken of any sum with so much respect.  It had been, well, a sort of a review of a new illustrated edition of Hans Andersen’s Tales, treating them as if they were modern stories, commenting on them from the point of view of morals and probability—­making fun of people who couldn’t give themselves up to the charm of a story unless it tallied with their own horrid little experiences of life.  She told it, she said, very badly, but perhaps he could get the idea.

He got it perfectly.  “Good,” he said.  “I’ll give you a job.  I’m a newspaper editor.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “you’re not Mr. Munsey, are you, or Mr. Reid, or Mr. Ochs?”

Her knowledge of newspaper owners seemed to come to a sudden end.

“No,” he answered, smiling, “nor even Mr. Hearst.  I did not say I owned a newspaper.  I edit it.  I need some one just like you for my book page, only you’d have to come to New York and work hard, and there wouldn’t be very much salary.  Can you work?”