oded her machine, lunched, and gave herself
up to an afternoon of vivid living,--a Russian pianist, or an exhibition
of vehemently modern pictures screaming their message from quiet walls
in a Fifth Avenue Gallery, an hour at Hope House Settlement with Emma
Ellis or Michael Daragh, tea and dancing with Rodney Harrison, or dinner
and a play with him, or a little session of snug coziness with Mrs.
Hetty Hills, giving the exile news of the Vermont village,--nothing was
dull or dutiful; the prosiest matters of every day were lined with rose.
She dramatized every waking moment. She was going to _work_, she wrote
Sarah.

I have been just marking time before, but now I'm marching, Sally.
I was up at six-thirty, had a cold dip and a laborer's breakfast,--I'm
afraid I haven't any temperament in my appetite, you know--and
sped off for atmosphere _and_ ozone, far below the Square, on a
two-mile tramp, and now I'm about to write. Rodney Harrison, who
knows everybody who _is_ anybody, has introduced me to some
vaudeville-powers-that-be and I am encouraged to try my hand at
what they call a sketch--a one-act play. It seems that they are in
need of something a little less thin than the usual article they've
been serving up to their patrons,--more of a playlet; something, I
suppose, to edify the wife of the Tired Business Man after he has
enjoyed the Tramp Juggler and the Trained Seals. Rodney Harrison has
helped me no end,--trotted me about to all the best places and
helped me to study and learn from them, and now I'm ready to begin.

And--heavens--how I adore it, Sally!

It's breaking my iron schedule to write a letter in business hours
but I knew you'd love to picture me here, gleefully clicking off
dollars and fame. Poor lamb! I wish you were on a job like this,
instead of pegging away at your piano. I wish there could be as much
fun in your work as mine. Of course, music is the most marvelous
thing in the world, but isn't there something of deadly monotony in
it?

But I fly to my toil!

Busily,

JANE.

_January Ninth_, 8.30 A.M.

It is just one week since I wrote you. I rend my garments, Sarah
Farraday, and sit in the dust. That fatuous note I sent you was a
thin crust of bluff over an abyss of fright. Who am I to write a
one-act play? I have sat here for eight solid horrible days with a
fine fat