“But, you see, I’m not a dramatist.”
“Oh, rubbish! If you’re clever enough to write books, of course you could write a play. I should, if I were you—really I should.” His voice was charged with encouragement.
“No, I couldn’t. Don’t let’s talk about that.”
“Why not? I want to hear about these books of yours. I’ve never met a literary lady before.”
It was of no use. He would not talk to her as she was almost sure that he would have talked to any other woman in the room, given those distant sounds of music from the ballroom, that hazy moonlight above the bench beneath the syringa-bushes.
Adela grimly sacrificed her art, perjuring her soul away. “I expect you think it’s very funny of me to write books,” she said, desperately adapting her vocabulary to his own. “I really do it mostly—a good deal—because it brings in money.” She tried to laugh, and hated herself for the artificiality of the sound.
“I suppose girls are always glad of extra pocket-money,” he assented indifferently.
A girl—that was how he thought of her.
She was pleased at that, but she struggled for a more serious recognition of her capabilities, too. “It’s not only pocket-money. I can really get a living from my writing, though I’m always at home with my mother. But I could be independent to-morrow if I liked.”
“Oh, come now!” The words might have expressed remonstrance, incredulity, astonishment.