“Sit up a moment; let me put this for your head,” he said, with the air of gentle authority she had noticed once or twice in his voice. It sent her thoughts back to the night she was so tired, so dreadfully tired, after the concert, when he had taken care of her.
She didn’t want the cushion; but it was nice to be taken care of. She raised her head, as he told her, with a smile, and he arranged the pillow with deft, capable hands. She had always liked the decided way he touched things; it was a sort of translation of his voice, she thought.
“You are tired. You are working too hard, I believe,” he said, going back to his seat.
“Only a little tired. I suppose I am working hard; but I like it, thank you.”
“You teach all day, and write all night,” he went on, looking at her deliberately and critically. “You will always wear yourself out—it is your nature, I suppose. The first time I ever saw you—”
“You told me it was my duty to have a sort of Lord Mayor’s luncheon every day,” she interrupted, laughing. “Oh! I’m not working too hard. I certainly don’t write all night; though sometimes, I own, it’s a little late when I happen to look at the time,” she added, with an air of great candor. “I’ve been lucky enough to get work on the Tide, thanks to Dr. Mansfield, you know; so a great deal of it is writing that must be done.”
“And the rest?”
“Oh!—experiments—attempts at the impossible, I’m afraid. I’ve got back my old longing for experience—always experience. Directly one begins to write one is conscious how little one knows—really knows, I mean. I should like to have lived the life of every one of my characters—I ought to have lived it, to write about them.”
“That would make existence a somewhat long drawn out affair. Even the theosophists have more mercy; they draw a veil of oblivion between the lives in most cases, don’t they? Besides, where does imagination come in?”
“Imagination is useful, certainly. Intuition is better—much better; but an ounce of experience is worth either of them six times over!” she declared. “It’s rather a demoralizing occupation—writing, I mean; don’t you think so?” she went on presently. “You begin, in time, to feel like a moral kaleidoscope, constantly shifting from one set of emotions to another, till you don’t know which is the real you—or if you’ve got a you.”