“First the idea, then the grouping, which is equivalent to our drama--then a search for models from whom to draw. Most young English writers--the artistic sense being a matter of experience, not of instinct, with most of us--begin just the other way about. Begin with their characters ... rummage about for a story in which to place them, and too often leave the idea out of the business altogether.... One evil consequence of this method--among many others--is that there is a distracting lack of completeness and _ensemble_ in so much English work. The idea should be like the thread on which beads are strung. It shouldn’t show, except at the two ends; but in point of fact it keeps the beads all together and in their proper relation.” Then, to one already hugely interested in this admirable creed of the art of fiction, Lucas Malet proceeded to a dissection, just and kind and ruthless, of the story as it stood. She hurt in order to heal, she cut in order that healthy tissue (if there was any) might have the chance to grow. She showed me by what process (if I applied it seriously and successfully) I might convert my Dodo-doll into something that did not only squeak when pressed in the stomach, and gave no other sign of vitality than closing its eyes when it was laid flat. In consequence, greatly exhilarated by this douche of cold water, I collected such fragments of an “idea” as existed, revised what I had written, and wrote (in pursuance of the “idea”) the second volume, as it subsequently appeared, in those days when novels were originally issued in three or two volumes at the price of a guinea and a half or a guinea. I finished it that autumn, sent it to the publisher recommended by Lucas Malet, who instantly accepted it. It came out in the following spring, that of 1893. I was out in Greece again at the time, and though it was my first public appearance (since _Sketches from Marlborough_ may be considered as a local phenomenon) I feel sure that from the time when, with trembling pride, I corrected the long inconvenient galley sheets that kept slipping on to the floor, I gave no further thought to it at all. Bad or good, I had done my best; what happened concerned me no more, for I was quite absorbed in the study of the precinct of Asclepios on the slopes of the Acropolis, in the life at Athens, and in a volume of short stories that I began to write with a pen still wet, so to speak, with the final corrections on the proof sheets of _Dodo_. She was done with, so far as I was concerned, and it was high time, now that I was twenty-five, to get on with something else, before the frosts of senility paralysed all further effort.