"I've a serial running in Fashion," she said; "and they print such ghastly long instalments that it takes me all my time to keep pace with them. You haven't bored me at all. A post on a paper is a thing you may have to wait a long time for, I'm afraid. You see, you aren't a journalist really, are you? You're a novelist."
"I'm nothing," said Kent, with a dreary laugh. "For that matter, I wouldn't care if it weren't on a paper. I'd jump at anything—a secretary-ship for preference."
"Secretaryships want personal introductions; they aren't got through advertisements." She hesitated. "I can tell you how you might make some money, if you'd like to do it," she added tentatively. "It's between ourselves—if it doesn't suit you, you'll be discreet?"
"Oh, of course," said Kent, with surprise. "But I can promise you in advance that any means of making some money will suit me just now. What are you going to say?"
She looked at him steadily with a slow smile.
"How would you like to write a novel for me?" she asked.
Instantaneously he did not grasp her meaning.
"How?" he exclaimed. "Do you mean you are offering to collaborate with me?"
"I can't do that," she said quickly. "I'm sure you know I should be delighted, but I shouldn't get the same terms if I did, and I haven't the time, either. That's just it! I'm obliged to refuse work because I haven't time to undertake it. No, but it might be a partnership as far as the payment goes. If you care to write a novel, I can place it under my own name, and you can have—well, a couple of hundred pounds almost as soon as you give it to me! I can guarantee that. You can have a couple of hundred a week or two after it's finished, whether I sell serial rights or not."
She took a cigarette out of a box on a table near her and lit it, a shade nervously. Kent sat pale and disturbed. That such things were done, at all events in France, he knew, but her proposal startled him more than he could say, or than he wished to say. His primary emotion was astonishment that Mrs. Deane-Pitt had had the courage to place her literary reputation in his hands; and then, as he reflected, an awful horror seized him at the thought of a year of his toil, of effort and accomplishment, going out for review with another person's name on it. The pause lasted some time.