light-hearted
pleasures, the sunlit world into which he had only looked through other
men's eyes.

"Perhaps you knew that I was somewhere across the threshold," she
suggested. "Did you drag your Mona wholly from your brain, or has she her
prototype somewhere in your world?"

He shook his head.

"Therein lies the weakness of all that I have ever written," he declared.
"There have been so few in my world from whom I could garner even the
gleanings of a personality. They are all, my men and women, artificially
made, not born. Twenty-three shillings a week has kept me well outside
the locked doors."

"Yet, you know, in many ways," she reflected, "Mona is like me."

"Like you because she was a helper of men," he assented swiftly, "a woman
of large sympathies, appealing to me, I suppose, because in my solitude,
thoughts of my own weakness taunted me, weakness because I couldn't break
out, I mean. Perhaps for that reason the thought of a strong woman
fascinated me, a woman large in thoughts and ways, a woman to whom
purposes and tendencies counted most. I dreamed of a woman sweetly
omnipotent, strong without a shadow of masculinity. That is where my Mona
was to be different from all other created figures."

"Chance," she declared, "is a wonderful thing. Chance has pitchforked you
here, absolutely to my side, I, the one woman who could understand what
you mean, who could give your Mona life. Don't think I am vain," she went
on. "I can assure you that my head isn't the least turned because I have
been successful. I simply know. Listen. I have few engagements in New
York. I should not be going back at all but to see my mother, who is too
delicate to travel, and who is miserable when I am away for long. Take
this pencil and paper. Let us leave off dreaming for a little time and
give ourselves up to technicalities. I want to draft a new first act and
a new last one, not so very different from your version and yet with
changes which I want to explain as we go on. Bring your chair a little
nearer--so. Now take down these notes."

They worked until the first gong for dinner rang. She sat up in her chair
with a happy little laugh.

"Isn't it wonderful!" she exclaimed. "I never knew time to pass so
quickly. There isn't any pleasure in the world like this," she added, a
little impulsively, "the pleasure of letting your thoughts run out to
meet some one else's, some one who understands. Take care of every line
we have written, m