“I’ve got so much I want to tell you, so much I want to ask your advice and help about,” said she, rising, with a change to what she regarded as an excellent business voice and manner.  “Perhaps we ought to go into executive session at once—­and let’s go into the library, too!  I know you’re awfully busy, but I do hope you’ve come prepared to make a good long visit.”

The article-writer neglected to reply at all, moving after her with his queer, startled look....

So these two passed from the Heth drawing-room to the Heth library, to talk about business:  the new Heth Works, in fine.  They came into a room which was intimately and poignantly associated with Hugo Canning.  Memories of the departed greeted Cally upon the threshold, and thereafter; only they were not poignant now.  Hugo’s face kept rising mistily beside the so different visage of the man he had instinctively disliked, his ancient hoodoo....

This was to be a meeting like none other Cally had ever had with the stranger in her house, a happy meeting, troubled by no shadow.  They sat down across the great table from each other, in good business style, as she considered; and then she began to talk eagerly, recounting to him without any embarrassment, though of course with some judicious expurgation, what had been going on in her mind, and out of it, during the last five days; beginning with the afternoon she had seen him at the Cooneys’, and culminating with the long talk she had had with her father at, and after, luncheon to-day.

And he, the only confidant she had ever had, sitting with his patched elbow on her father’s table, and his chin in his cupped hand, attended every word with his singular quality of interest.  He was unique among all the people she had known, in that the things he seemed to care most about were never things for himself at all....

“So that’s how it stands now,” said Cally, presently.  “My father was naturally surprised at first, as I’ve never shown any interest in his work before, and of course he said he wouldn’t do it,—­wouldn’t take my money, I mean, though it’s really his all the time.  But at last I did get him to talking about it seriously, and then he grew more and more interested....  Oh, I know he’s going to do it!  I know it!—­That’s all settled!  And I do think he’ll let me have a hand in really planning it—­that is, if I can show him that I—­I know anything about it....  Well, of course I don’t, you see—­nothing, nothing!—­and that’s where my problem begins.  I’ve got to learn everything, from the very start, and do it quickly....  Do you think I possibly can?—­”

“Books!” he cried, throwing out both hands.  “What’re they for but to teach us everything, right away?...”

In fact, her problem there was really no problem at all, it seemed.  Pond himself had at hand a fine little general library on all these subjects; there was the State Library; there were the bookstores of the world:  all waiting for her, all packed with meaty information.  Perhaps, just as a starter, she would let him make out a sort of preliminary check-list to-night, out of catalogues, out of some bully advertisements in the backs of Pond’s works....