“I write stories which are not accepted. I have tried other things—taking good ideas to a business man, for instance. But I could do nothing with it. My time is my own.”
“You live alone?”
“Quite alone.”
He walked up and down the room once or twice and then sat down in a chair opposite to me. “Would you have any objection,” he said, “to telling me rather more about yourself? I can assure you that I do not ask from idle curiosity, and if you wish it, nothing that you say will be repeated.”
“I don’t think,” I said, “that there are any dark secrets in my life. At the same time I don’t know why I should tell you anything.”
“No more do I,” he repeated. “Except that I have some delicate work that I want done and that I think you are one of the few people who could do it for me properly.”
“That’s all right,” I said, “I want work. I’ll tell you.”
I gave him a rapid sketch of what I had done. I noticed at the time that it was still more a sketch of what I had failed to do. He put in a keen question here and there. At the end he turned to me with a smile.
“Now,” he said, “I am going to speak to you plainly, Miss Castel. I should imagine that your father was a clever fool.”
“He was—but I don’t let you say so. You can speak quite plainly about myself.”