Satisfied?" Anne asked.

"Well, I've been given an opportunity of knowing them from the inside," I
said.

"You'll be writing a play about us," Anne remarked carelessly.

I was astonished to find that she knew I had written plays. "How did you
know that I did that sort of thing?" I asked.

"I've seen one of them," she said. "'_The Mulberry Bush_'; when mother and
I were in London last winter. And Arthur said you were the same Mr.
Melhuish. I suppose Frank Jervaise had told him."

"People who go to the theatre don't generally notice the name of the
author," I commented.

"I do," she said. "I'm interested in the theatre. I've read dozens of
plays, in French, mostly. I don't think the English comedies are nearly so
well done. Of course, the French have only one subject, but they are so
much more witty. Have you ever read _Les Hannetons_, for instance?"

"No. I've seen the English version on the stage," I said.

I was ashamed of having written _The Mulberry Bush_, of having presumed to
write any comedy. I felt the justice of her implied criticism. Indeed, all
my efforts seemed to me, just then, as being worthless and insincere. All
my life, even. There was something definite and keen about this girl of
twenty-three that suddenly illuminated my intellectual and moral
flabbiness. She had already a definite attitude towards social questions
that I had never bothered to investigate. She had shown herself to have a
final pride in the matter of blackmailing old Jervaise. And in half a
dozen words she had exposed the lack of real wit in my attempts at
playwriting. I was humbled before her superior intelligence. Her speech
had still a faint flavour of the uneducated, but her judgments were
brilliantly incisive; despite her inferentially limited experience, she
had a clearer sight of humanity than I had.

"You needn't look so depressed," she remarked.

"I was thinking what a pity it is that you should go to Canada," I
returned.

"I want to go," she said. "I want to feel free and independent; not a
chattel of the Jervaises."

"But--Canada!" I remonstrated.

"You see," she said, "I could never leave my father and mother. Wherever
they go, I must go, too. They've no one but me to look after them. And
this does, at last, seem, in a way, a chance. Only, I can't trust myself.
I'm too impulsive about things like this. Oh! do you think it might kill
my father if he were torn up by the roots? Sometimes I think it might be
good