“Fine,” said Gita temperately. “But I thought he had discovered a gold-mine at least.”
“Old stuff. I shouldn’t have liked that at all. But I wish you’d warm up. Don’t you see what it means to me?”
“Oh!” Gita sprang to her feet with a little squeal of delight. “Of course! It means you won’t have to work any more and can devote all your time to writing.” She did not kiss Elsie as another girl would have done, but seized her hand and pumped it up and down. “Now I am excited. It’s too wonderful.”
“That’s it, my dear. After I had got over being exultant for Geoff and he had told me to go straight to the store and hand in my resignation, I’m bound to say I forgot him and was filled with an entirely personal excitement. I never felt so happy in my life.”
“I should think so. I know what it is to be free.”
She looked at Elsie’s flushed face and sparkling eyes and wondered if the young author had what was known as temperament and had been severely repressing it. She was as curious about the secret places of the ego as Elsie herself. “I suppose you’ll give yourself up to an orgy of writing now,” she said. “Get to work on that novel and be famous this time next year?”
“I’ll write it anyhow. Oh!” Elsie sprang to her feet and lifted her arms. The color left her face and it glowed with a white radiance. “Oh! To know that I may have a career! A career! Whether you fail or set the world on fire cannot make so very much difference if only you have the opportunity to try for it, to work for it, to think of nothing else! And to be able to write constantly without interruption. You cannot imagine what it means.”
“Yes, I can,” said Gita sharply. “And it makes me feel like ten cents. I went to work in the garden this morning because I had nothing to do. I’m sick of the Boardwalk, and I can’t read all day.”
Elsie came down from the empyrean and regarded her charge anxiously. “You’re not getting bored? You!”
“Well, who wouldn’t be, in this house all alone? I think I’d have enjoyed it if you and Polly hadn’t put a lot of ideas into my head, for then I’d have been full of my new independence and freedom from sordid worries, and I always wanted to put in a lot of reading——”