"I thought ladies generally wrote novels?" "I wish to be original, you see." "Do you send them anywhere?" "Oh, yes; I _send_ them; I suppose I always shall!" "You're really in earnest then? You're not discouraged?" "I'm earnest, and discouraged, too.... Is it impertinent to ask if _you_ had experiences like mine when you were younger?" "I wrote plays for ten years before I ever passed through a stage-door--one must expect to work for years before one is produced.... Of course, one may work all one's life, and not be produced then!" "It depends how clever one is, or whether one is clever at all?" "It depends on a good many things. It depends sometimes on advice." If she had been less lovely, he would not have said this, and he knew it; if she had not been Mrs. Heriot, he would not have said it either. The average woman who "wants a literary man's advice" is the bane of his existence, and Field was, not only without sympathy for the tyro as a rule--he was inclined to disparage the majority of his colleagues. He was clever, and was aware of it; he occupied a prominent position. He had arrived at the point when he could dare to be psychological. "It depends sometimes on advice," he said. And the wife of George Heriot, Q.C., murmured: "Unfortunately, I have nobody to advise me!" Even as it was, he regretted it when he took his leave; and the manuscript that he had offered to read lay in his study for three weeks before he opened it. He picked it up one night, remembering that the writer had been very beautiful. The reading inspired him with a desire to see her again. That the play was full of faults goes without saying, but it was unconventional, and there was character in it. He recollected that she had interested him while they talked after dinner on a couch by the piano; and, as her work was promising, he wrote, volunteering to point out in an interview, if she liked, those errors in technique which it would take too long to explain by letter. It cannot be made too clear that if she had sent him a work of genius and had been plain Miss Smith in a home-made blouse, he would have done nothing of the sort. He called upon her with no idea that his hints would make a dramatist of her, nor did he care in the slightest degree whether they did, or did not. She was a singularly lovely woman, and as her drama had not been stupid--stupidity would have repelled him--he thought a tête-à-tête with her would be agreeable.