“Oh!” I said, and I was surprised to such a degree that the oh sounded like a giggle at the end. That made me so ashamed that I sat up a little more erect and ejaculated vivaciously, “You—you astonish me.”
It was the funniest thing—she hung her head like a conscience-smitten child. “I—I haven’t told her about it because it would encourage her and then later she would—would be all the more disappointed. I can’t write, I tell you.”
“The vote was almost unanimous,” I remarked stiffly.
She stared at me doubtfully. “Well, maybe that story is good but I know I couldn’t do it again. And anyhow my mother told me the plot.”
“Oh,” I said. It was really the plot that had won the prize, you understand, though indeed I had found the style eminently praiseworthy also according to all the principles of criticism. It almost fulfilled the rhetorical rules about unity, mass and coherence.
“So you will let me withdraw?” she questioned timidly, “here’s the ten dollars.” She held out the crumpled bill which she had been clutching all the evening.
I thought I might as well be going. “It’s allowable to use your own mother’s plot,” I assured her, “don’t bother about that. Good bye.”
Without looking at her I hurried through the alleyway into the corridor, flew past the sanctum, darted into the staircase, then halted, turned around, stopped at the water-cooler for a taste of ice water, then walked slowly back to her room.
I put my head in at the door. “You heard me say, didn’t you, that the story has gone to press?”
She lifted her face from that same yellow silk pillow. “Yes,” she said.