She rose quickly, as though her time was very precious, and passed over to the table, where a great bowl of violets stood.  The room was pretty:  it had reminded Queed, when he entered it, of Nicolovius’s room, though there was a softer note in it, as the flowers, the work-bag on the table, the balled-up veil and gloves on the mantel-shelf.  He had liked, too, the soft-shaded lamps; the vague resolve had come to him to install a lamp in the Scriptorium later on.  But now, thinking of nothing like this, he sat in a thick silence gazing at her with unwinking sternness.

Sharlee carefully gathered the violets from the bowl, shook a small shower of water from their stems, dried them with a pocket handkerchief about the size of a silver dollar.  Next she wrapped the stems with purple tinfoil, tied them with a silken cord and tassel and laid the gorgeous bunch upon a magazine back, to await her further pleasure.  Then, coming back, she resumed her seat facing the shabby young man she was assisting to see himself as others saw him.

“I might,” she said, “simply stop there.  I might tell you that you are a failure as an editorial writer because you have nothing at all to say that is of the smallest interest to the great majority of the readers of editorials, and would not know how to say it if you had.  That would be enough to satisfy most men, but I see that I must make things very plain and definite for you.  Mr. Queed, you are a failure as an editorial writer because you are first a failure in a much more important direction.  You’re a failure as a human being—­as a man.”

She was watching his face lightly, but closely, and so she was on her feet as soon as he, and had her hand out before he had even thought of making this gesture.

“It is useless for this harangue to continue,” he said, with a brow of storm.  “Your conception of helpful advice ...”

But Sharlee’s voice, which had begun as soon as his, drowned him out....  “Complimented you a little too far, I see.  I shall be sure to remember after this,” she said with such a sweet smile, “that, after all your talk, you are just the average man, and want to hear only what flatters your little vanity. Good-night.  So nice to have seen you.”

She nodded brightly, with faint amusement, and turning away, moved off toward the door at the back.  Queed, of course, had no means of knowing that she was thinking, almost jubilantly:  “I knew that mouth meant spirit!” He only knew that, whereas he had meant to terminate the interview with a grave yet stinging rebuke to her, she had given the effect of terminating the interview with a graceful yet stinging rebuke to him.  This was not what he wanted in the least.  Come to think of it, he doubted if he wanted the interview to end at all.

“Miss Weyland ...”

She turned on the threshold of the farther door.  “I beg your pardon!  I thought you’d gone!  Your hat?—­I think you left it in the hall, didn’t you?”