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."
Miss King sighed. There was something in the ideal which Meldon set
before her which was very attractive. The details she ignored.
Bottled porter was not a drink she cared for, and no woman, however
emancipated, likes a pipe. In spite of the satisfaction she found in
her literary success, there was in her a desire for quiet and restful
ways of life. There was no doubt that she would sleep sounder at night
if she lived simply, somewhere in the country, and forgot the
excitements of the novelist's art. Meldon, indeed, did not seem to
enjoy absolutely unbroken rest at night; but Miss King's imagination,
although she wrote improper novels, did not insist on representing a
baby as an inevitable part of domesticated life.
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