black lashes, they were dark and louring.

'Have you, by any chance, a spark of the devil in you?' asked Merton,
taking a social header.

'I have been told so, and sometimes thought so,' said Miss Willoughby.
'Perhaps this one will go out by fasting if not by prayer. Yes, I _have_
a spark of the Accuser of the Brethren.'

'_Tant mieux_,' thought Merton.

All the people were talking and laughing now. Miss Maskelyne told a
story to the table. She did a trick with a wine glass, forks, and a
cork. Logan interviewed Miss Martin, who wrote tales for the penny
fiction people, on her methods. Had she a moral aim, a purpose? Did she
create her characters first, and let them evolve their fortunes, or did
she invent a plot, and make her characters fit in?

Miss Martin said she began with a situation: 'I wish I could get one
somewhere as secretary to a man of letters.'

'They can't afford secretaries,' said Logan. 'Besides they are family
men, married men, and so--'

'And so what?'

'Go look in any glass, and say,' said Logan, laughing. 'But how do you
begin with a situation?'

'Oh, anyhow. A lot of men in a darkened room. Pitch dark.'

'A seance?'

'No, a conspiracy. They are in the dark that when arrested they may
swear they never saw each other.'

'They could swear that anyhow.'

'Conspirators have consciences. Then there comes a red light shining
between the door and the floor. Then the door breaks down under a
hammer, the light floods the room. There is a man in it whom the others
never saw enter.'

'How did he get in?'

'He was there before they came. Then the fighting begins. At the end of
it where is the man?'

'Well, where is he? What was he up to?'

'I don't know yet,' said Miss Martin, 'it just comes as I go on. It has
just got to come. It is a fourteen hours a day business. All writing. I
crib things from the French. Not whole stories. I take the opening
situation; say the two men in a boat on the river who hook up a sack. I
don't read the rest of the Frenchman, I work on from the sack, and guess
what was in it.'

'What was in the sack?'

'_In the Sack_! A name for a story! Anything, from the corpse of a
freak (good idea, corpse of a freak with no arms and legs, or with too
many) to a model of a submarine ship, or political papers. But I am
tired of corpses. They pervade my works. They give "a _bouquet_, a
fragrance," as Mr. Talbot Twysden said about his cheap cla