“Ah, I still keep my Adela, I’m glad to say. She’s almost too fastidious, I sometimes think. She’s never made herself cheap with anyone. And then there’s her writing, too.”
Adela had slowly been making a name for herself, but her great success only came after her mother’s death. A long novel, at which she had been working for several years, made her reputation in the world of letters.
She had inherited money from her mother, and her books brought her in more.
Adela was able to indulge in artistic necessities.
It became imperative that she should retire, whenever she wanted to write, to a Yorkshire moor with an atmosphere of ruggedness and strength, and very few trees.
So many journalists, so many fellow-writers, such a number of the new-born coterie that “followed the Adela Alston method” had inquired so earnestly in what peculiar setting Adela found it necessary to enshrine her inspiration, that the need of the Yorkshire moor had suddenly sprung, full-grown, into being.
She built a two-roomed cottage, engaged a caretaker, and wrote in a small summer-house, wearing knickerbockers and sandals, and smoking violently. This was in the summer. In the winter, inspiration was obliged to content itself with Hampstead, and Adela had to wear shoes and stockings and a skirt.
At forty she had gained greatly in assurance, and knew herself for the leading spirit in a small group of intensely modern women writers, by whom she was devoutly worshipped.
Adela became accustomed to being the person who was listened to, in the society of her fellows.
They were not only interested in her work, but deeply, intensely interested in herself.