"I want to get into closer touch with my readers," she explained, helping herself charmingly to the chocolate creams. "In a book, you cannot get into direct _rapport_ with your public. Your characters are your rivals and distract attention from the personality of the author. In a journal I shall be able to chat with them freely, open my heart to them and gather them to it. There is a legitimate curiosity to learn all about me--the same curiosity that I feel about other authors. Why should I allow myself to be viewed in the refracting medium of alien ink? Let me sketch myself to my readers, tell them what I eat and drink, and how I write, and when, what clothes I wear and how much I pay for them, what I think of this or that book of mine, of this or that character of my creation, what my friends think of me, and what I think of my friends. All the features of the paper will combine to make my face. I shall occupy all the stories, and every column will have me at the top. In this way I hope, not only to gratify my yearnings for sympathy, but to stimulate the circulation of my books. Nay more, with the eye of my admirers thus encouragingly upon me, I shall work more zealously. You see, Lord Silverdale, we authors are a race apart--without the public hanging upon our words, we are like butterflies in a London fog, or actors playing to an empty auditorium." "I have noticed that," said Lord Silverdale dryly, "before authors succeed, it takes them a year to write a book, after they succeed it takes them only a month." "You see I am right," said Ellaline eagerly. "That's what the sun of public sympathy does. It ripens work quickly." "Yes, and when the sun is very burning, it sometimes takes the authors no time at all." "Ah, now you are laughing at me. You are speaking of 'ghosts.'" "Yes. Ghost stories are published all the year round--not merely at Christmas. Don't think I'm finding fault. I look upon an author who keeps his ghost, as I do on a tradesmen who keeps his carriage. It is a sign he has succeeded." "Oh, but it's very wicked, giving the public underweight like that!" said Ellaline in her sweet, serious way. "How can anybody write as well as yourself? But why I mentioned about _The Cherub_ is because it has just struck me the paper might become the organ of the Old Maids' Club, for I should make a point of speaking freely of my aims and aspirations in joining it. I presume you know all about Miss Dulcimer's scheme?" "Oh, yes! But I don't think it feasible." "You don't?" she said, with a little tremor of astonishment in her voice. "And why not?" She looked anxiously into his eyes for the reply. "The candidates are too charming to remain single," he explained, smiling. She smiled back a little at him, those sweet gray eyes still looking into his. "_You_ are not a literary man?" she said irrelevantly. "I am afraid I must plead guilty to trying to be," he said. "The evidence is down in black and white."