Maude and I might have been happy together. She was not the kind you couldn’t be candid with. She used to say she admired honesty and sincerity above all other traits. And she was deeply interested in me, which was natural enough, as I had no reservations, no reticences from her. I believed that when you cared about a girl it was wrong to have secrets from her.

And that was her policy, too, though now and then she carried it too far. One day I telephoned her and asked her what she had been doing that morning.

“I’ve been reading the most fascinating book,” she said.

“What book?” I asked politely.

“I can’t remember the title,” she said, “but it’s about a man in love with a girl, and he——”

“Who wrote it?” I interrupted.

“Wait a minute,” said Maude. I waited four minutes. “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said. “I mislaid the book. I thought I left it in my room and I looked all around for it, and then I asked Hulda if she’d seen it, and she said no, though I asked her that the other day about something else, and she said no, and later I found out that she had seen it and put it in a drawer, so I went to the library and the book wasn’t there, and then I went back to my room and looked again, and I was just coming back to tell you I couldn’t find it when here it is, guess where, right on the telephone stand. Who wrote it? Hutchison is the author. A. M. S.—no, wait a minute—A. S. M. Hutchinson, not Hutchison. There’s an ‘n’ in it. Two ‘n’s’ really. But I mean an ‘n’ between the ‘i’ and the ‘s.’ I mean it’s Hut-chin-son, and not Hut-chi-son. But what’s the difference who writes a book as long as it’s a good book?”

There may have been more, but I was reasonably certain that the author’s name was Hutchinson, so I hung up the receiver, though the way I felt at the time was that hanging was too good for it.

I had dinner with her that night at a restaurant.

“Coffee?” asked the waiter.

“No,” I said. And to her: “Coffee keeps me awake. If I took a cup now I wouldn’t close an eye all night. Some folks can drink it and not notice it, but take me; I’m funny that way, and if I took a cup now I wouldn’t close an eye all night. Some can, and some can’t. I like it, but it doesn’t like me. Ha, ha! I wouldn’t close an eye all night, and if I don’t get my sleep—and a good eight hours at that—I’m not fit for a thing all the next day. It’s a pretty important thing, sleep; and——”

It was important to Maude, self-centred thing that she was. Here was I confiding to her something I never had told another soul, and she wasn’t merely dozing; she was asleep. I rattled a knife against a plate, and she awoke.

It was a good thing I found out about her in time.