Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/274

 How readily this wise man put his finger on the truth! Lanice withdrew in confusion. He called her back.

'Now I am going to disappoint you. Although this tale, even as it now stands, is really superior to most of the stories in the "Journal," I cannot offer to undertake it. You put your poor little hero through such a parcel of tricks (actually I sometimes think women are positively cruel), and at the end, although he sees the nymphs in the birch trees on a spring night and has felt the satyr in the wind buffeting the house—in spite of all these wonders he has seen you leave him in such an abnormal state he is really little short of idiocy. In other words, your story is one of disintegration—a study of morbid mentality ending in breakdown.' Then he added kindly: 'But it is rather splendid. I'm glad that you wrote it. It is much better to start out with a runaway Pegasus and then train him down than to straddle a brewer's lumbering dray horse. Even if you can whip the thing up to a gallop, at is not its natural gait. It always has a heavy foot. Go to it, Miss Bardeen. Write like the Devil—even about the Devil if you want to. Go to it, and please always feel free to show me what you do.'

Although she appreciated his kindness and wisdom, she did not show him the other stories. So 'The Amber Witch' and 'The Salem Satyr' and 'The Tale that is Told,' soon joined by 'The Whisperer,' lay in the bottom of her dresser drawrer. By Christmas she had almost forgotten them.