“Well, this is something, at least, isn’t it—­to be good friends, and to have had this much of each other?”

“Surely!  A lot!” Susan answered, in smiling relief.  And a moment later she had delivered her message, and was gone, and he had seated himself at his work again.

How much was pretense and how much serious earnest, on his part, she wondered.  How much was real on her own?  Not one bit of it, said Susan, fresh from her bath, in the bracing cool winter morning, and walking briskly into town for the mail.  Not—­not much of it, anyway, she decided when tea-time brought warmth and relaxation, the leaping of fire-light against the library walls, the sound of the clear and cultivated voice.

But what was the verdict later, when Susan, bare-armed and bare-shouldered, with softened light striking brassy gleams from her hair, and the perfumed dimness and silence of the great house impressing every sense, paused for a message from Stephen Bocqueraz at the foot of the stairs, or warmed her shining little slipper at the fire, while he watched her from the chair not four feet away?

When she said “I—­I’m not going to answer you,” in the clear, bright morning light, Susan was enjoyably aware of the dramatic value of the moment; when she evaded Bocqueraz’s eye throughout an entire luncheon she did it deliberately; it was a part of the cheerful, delightful game it pleased them both to be playing.

But not all was posing, not all was pretense.  Nature, now and then, treacherously slipped in a real thrill, where only play-acting was expected.  Susan, laughing at the memory of some sentimental fencing, was sometimes caught unaware by a little pang of regret; how blank and dull life would be when this casual game was over!  After all, he was the great writer; before the eyes of all the world, even this pretense at an intimate friendship was a feather in her cap!

And he did not attempt to keep their rapidly developing friendship a secret; Susan was alternately gratified and terrified by the reality of his allusions to her before outsiders.  No playing here!  Everybody knew, in their little circle, that, in the nicest and most elder-brotherly way possible, Stephen Bocqueraz thought Susan Brown the greatest fun in the world, and quoted her, and presented her with his autographed books.  This side of the affair, being real, had a tendency to make it all seem real, and sometimes confused, and sometimes a little frightened Susan.

“That a woman of Emily’s mental caliber can hire a woman of yours, for a matter of dollars and cents,” he said to Susan whimsically, “is proof that something is radically wrong somewhere!  Well, some day we’ll put you where values are a little different.  Anybody can be rich.  Mighty few can be Susan!”