"It is very trying. I often feel completely exhausted at the end of the day."
"Nerve strain," said Meldon. "I don't wonder. It's a marvel how you stand it."
"Then I can't sleep," said Miss King. "Often I can't sleep for two or three nights together."
"It surprises me to hear that you ever sleep at all. Don't they haunt you? I've always heard—"
"My people?"
"Yes, your people, if that's what you call them. I'd have thought they'd never have let you alone."
"Some of them do haunt me. I often cry when I think of them. It's very foolish, of course; but in spite of myself I cry."
"Then why on earth do you go on with it?"
"It's my art," said Miss King.
"I'm not an artist myself," said Meldon, "in any sense of the word, so I can't exactly enter into your feelings; but I should say, speaking as a complete outsider, that the proper thing for you would be to drop the whole thing, take to smoking a pipe instead of those horrid scented cigarettes, drink a bottle of porter before you go to bed, and then sleep sound."