She looked radiant in the costume which she was wearing.  He thought he had never seen a lovelier girl—­he was certain that he had never seen a better-dressed girl. (Mr. Courtland was not clever enough to know that it is only the beautiful girls who seem well dressed in the eyes of men.) There was a certain frankness in her face that made it very interesting—­the frankness of a child who looks into the face of the world and wonders at its reticence.  He felt her soft gray eyes resting upon his face, as she shook hands with him and begged him to go in and have tea with her.  He felt strangely uneasy under her eyes this evening, and his self-possession failed him so far as to make it impossible for him to excuse himself.  It did not occur to him to say that he could not drink tea with her on account of having an appointment which he could not break through without the most deplorable results.  He felt himself led by her into one of her drawing rooms, and sitting with his back to the window while her frank eyes remained on his face, asking (so he thought) for the nearest approach to their frankness in response, that a man who has lived in the world of men dare offer to a maiden whose world is within herself.

“Oh, yes!  I got the usual notification of the Order of the Bald Eagle,” said he, in reply to her inquiry.  “I shall wear it next my heart until I die.  The newspapers announced the honor that had been done to me the same morning.”

“You cannot keep anything out of the papers,” said Phyllis.

“Even if you want to—­a condition which doesn’t apply to my case,” said he.  “My publishers admitted to me last week that they wouldn’t rest easy if any newspaper appeared during the next month without my name being in its columns in some place.”

“I’m sure they were delighted at the development of the Spiritual Aneroid’s attack upon you,” said Phyllis.

“They told me I was a made man,” said he.

She threw back her head—­it was her way—­and laughed.  Her laughter—­all the grace of girlhood was in its ring; it was girlhood made audible—­was lightening her fair face as she looked at him.

“How funny!” she cried.  “You fight your way through the New Guinea forests; you are in daily peril of your life; you open up a new country, and yet you are not a made man until you are attacked by a wretched newspaper.”

“That is the standpoint of the people who sell books, so you may depend upon its being the standpoint of the people who buy books,” said he.

“I can quite believe it,” said she.  “Mr. Geraint, the novelist, took me down to dinner at Mrs. Lemuel’s last night, and he told me that the only thing that will make people buy books is seeing the author’s portrait in some of the illustrated papers, or hearing from some of the interviews which are published regarding him that he never could take sugar in his coffee.  The reviews of his books are read only by his brother authors, and they never buy a book, Mr. Geraint says; but the interviews are read by the genuine buyers.”