This interview accordingly followed. Ada was requested to seat herself, and her friend, half turning from his desk, stroked his nose for some moments in silence. “Now, Miss Ada Warren,” he began, with a light tone, which rang kindly enough, yet was a little hard for the listener to bear, “I am not going to discourse vanity, and to prophesy smooth things, because I don’t want you to come to me at some future date and inform me that I was an old humbug. I am at present, you understand, the impartial critic, and I shall use purely professional language. What I have to say about this little story of yours is that it shows very considerable promise, and not a little power of expression, but that, for a work of art, it is too--you understand the word--too subjective. It reads too much like a personal experience, which the writer is not far enough away from to describe with regard to artistic proportion. I suspected what was going on upstairs, and, on the whole, I was pleased when you put this into my hands. But, one question. This is not the only story you have written?” Ada admitted that it was only one of several. “So I supposed. Now let me have them all, let me look through them. Time, pooh! I am going to help you if I can. I believe you are quite capable of helping yourself if left alone, and for that very reason, a hint or two out of my experience may prove useful. In a manner, you have always been my pupil, and I am proud of you; I will say so much. There are several things in this sketch which I think uncommonly well put; and--a great thing--the style is not feminine. But--it isn’t a piece of artistic workmanship. You haven’t got outside of the subject, and looked at it all round. It is an extempore, in short, and that you mustn’t allow yourself. Will you do something for me?” “What is it?” “Will you write a story in which every detail, every person, shall be purely a product of your imagination--nothing suggested by events within your own experience? That is, of course, _directly_ suggested; you must work upon your knowledge of the world. Write me such a story in about a dozen of these pages--will you? Perhaps you have one already written?” Ada reflected, and, with an abashed smile, thought not. “Well, let me have all the others, and set to work upon the new one. Mind, I don’t regard this impulse of yours at all in a trivial light. I say get to _work_; and I mean it. Write with as determined endeavour as if your bread and cheese depended upon it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.” “Unfortunately?” “Well, let that pass. I have no right to speak in that way of the priceless blessing of independence--the gift of Heaven----” “If it _be_ the gift of Heaven,” remarked Ada, with meaning. “Oh, it always is; though not always used to celestial ends.” “You meant, though, that you doubted my power of perseverance, when there was temptation to idleness.”