“—and she’d been so absent-minded I couldn’t get anything out of her. I thought I knew her well enough to tease her. I had told her all _my_ affairs. So—‘I believe you’re in love,’ I said. ‘Oh, well, you’ll get over it. It’s a phase.’ Was there any harm in that? It was only repeating what you had said to me about her, you know,” she reminded the blonde lady. “But she froze instantly. She made no comment. She just changed the subject. But I felt as if I had been introduced to a new Madala. I wished I hadn’t said it.” “You are a little fool, Beryl,” said the blonde lady tolerantly. “But she _was_ altered,” insisted the Baxter girl. “The old Madala would have laughed.” “Yes, she was altered,” said Anita. “Her whole attitude to herself and her work changed that spring. How she horrified me one day. It was soon after _Ploughed Fields_ came out, and we were talking about her new book, at least I was, pumping a little, I confess, and suddenly she said—‘Anita, I don’t think I’ll write any more. This stuff—’ she had her hands on _Eden Walls_, ‘it’s harsh, it’s ugly; and so’s _Ploughed Fields_. Isn’t it?’ ‘It’s true to life,’ I said, ‘that’s the triumph of it.’ ‘Is it?’ she said. She looked at me in an uneasy sort of way. And then—‘I’d like to write a kind book, a beautiful book.’ I told her that she couldn’t, that she was a realist. ‘That’s why,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I’ll write any more.’ I laughed, of course. Anybody would have laughed. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I mean it. I haven’t an idea in my head. I’m tired and empty. I think I shall go away for a wander. There’s always the country, anyhow.’ ‘Well, Madala,’ I said, ‘I think you’re ungrateful. You’re a made woman. You’ve got your name: you’ve got your line: you’ve got your own gift——’ ‘Oh, that!’ she said, as if she were flicking off a fly. I was irritated. It was so arrogant. ‘What more do you want?’ I asked her. ‘What more _can_ you want?’ She said—‘I don’t know,’ looking at me, you know, as if she expected me to tell her. I disliked that mood of hers. One did expect, with a woman of her capacity, to be entertained as it were, to have ideas presented, not to be asked to provide them. Then she began, à propos of nothing at all—‘If I ever marry——’ That startled me. We’d never touched on the subject before. ‘Oh, my dear Madala,’ I said, ‘you must never think of anything so—so unnecessary. For you, of all people, it would be fatal. It would waste your time, it would distract your thoughts, it would narrow your outlook, it would end by spoiling your work altogether. I’ve seen it happen so often. It’s terrible to me even to think of a woman with a future like yours, throwing it away just for the——’ She interrupted me. ‘I wouldn’t marry for the sake of getting married, if you mean that. Not even for children.’” “You didn’t mean that, did you, Anita?” said Miss Howe smiling a little.