“I know, but you are on the spot, with all the material and local colour. You know Gabriel too; we used to speak about you.” “He is no admirer of mine.” “No. He is a great stylist, and you have no sense of style.” “Nor you of anything else,” I put in rudely, hastily. “A harsh judgment, characteristic. You are a blunt realist, I should say, hard and a little unwomanly, calling a spade by its ugliest name; but sentimental with pen in hand you really do write abominably sometimes. But you will remind the world of me again. I don’t want to be forgotten. I would rather be misrepresented than forgotten. There are so few geniuses! Keats and I.... _Don’t go to sleep._” I could not help it, however. Several times after that, whenever I remembered something I wished to ask her, and opened dulled eyes, she was not there at all. The chair where she had sat was empty, and the fire had died down to dull ash. I drowsed and dreamed. In my dreams I achieved style, an ambient, exquisite style, and wrote about Margaret Capel and Gabriel Stanton so glowingly and convincingly that all the world wept for them and wondered, and my sales ran into hundreds of thousands. “_We have always expected great things of this author, but she has transcended our highest expectations...._” The reviews were all on this scale. For the remainder of that night no writer in England was as famous as I. Publishers and literary agents hung round my doorsteps and I rejected marvellous offers. If I had not been so thirsty and my mouth dry, no one could have been happier, but the dryness and thirst woke me continuously, and I execrated Suzanne for having put the water bottle out of my reach, and forgotten to supply me with acid drops. I remember grumbling about it to Margaret. CHAPTER II