I watched her face, and soon the dreadful understanding came to me. She, too, did not understand. My literary aspirations were as nothing to her! Oh, the bitterness of that moment. My mother, who had cared for me as a child, and obeyed my slightest wish, no longer understood me. And saddest of all, there was no way out. None. Once, in my youth, I had believed that I was not the child of my parents at all, but an adopted one--perhaps of rank and kept out of my inheritance by those who had selfish motives. But now I knew that I had no rank or inheritance, save what I should carve out for myself. There was no way out. None. Mother rose slowly, staring at me with perfectly fixed and glassy eyes. "I am absolutely sure," she said, "that you are on the edge of something. It may be typhoid, or it may be an elopement. But one thing is certain. You are not normal." With this she left me to my thoughts. But she did not neglect me. Sis came up after dinner, and I saw mother's fine hand in that. Although not hungry in the usual sense of the word, I had begun to grow rather empty, and was nibbling out of a box of chocolates when Sis came. She got very little out of me. To one with softness and tenderness I would have told all, but Sis is not that sort. And at last she showed her claws. "Don't fool yourself for a minute," she said. "This literary pose has not fooled anybody. Either you're doing it to appear interesting, or you've done something you're scared about. Which is it?" I refused to reply. "Because if it's the first, and you're trying to look literary, you are going about it wrong," she said. "Real Literary People don't go round mooning and talking about the opal sea." I saw mother had been talking, and I drew myself up. "They look and act like other people," said Leila, going to the bureau and spilling powder all over the place. "Look at Beecher." "Beecher!" I cried, with a thrill that started inside my elbows. (I have read this to one or two of the girls, and they say there is no such thrill. But not all people act alike under the influence of emotion, and mine is in my arms, as stated.) "The playwright," Sis said. "He's staying next door. And if he does any languishing it is not by himself." There may be some who have for a long time had an ideal, but without hoping ever to meet him, and then suddenly learning that he is nearby, with indeed but a wall or two between, can be calm and cool. But I am not like that. Although long suppression has taught me to dissemble at times, where my heart is concerned I am powerless. For it was at last my heart that was touched. I, who had scorned the other sex and felt that I was born cold and always would be cold, that day I discovered the truth. Reginald Beecher was my ideal. I had never spoken to him, nor indeed seen him, except for his pictures. But the very mention of his name brought a lump to my throat.