Overlooked

stay there a month or, still better, two months, I asked him what I could possibly do there. The

"Why don't you

ould be substituted for newspaper article. I objected that, although I found writing on my typewriter a soothing occupation, I had always been given to understand by authors that cor

gun, I made acquaintances more rapidly than I had expecte

eed, rarely met a novelist. When I have done so they have either been elderly ladies who specialized in the life of the Quartier-Latin, or co

t he was evidently satisfied that I knew his work. I enjoyed the books of his which were read to me, but then, I enjoy any novel. I did not tell him that. I let him take for granted that I had taken for granted all there was to be taken for granted. I imagine him to wear a faded Venetian-red tie, a low collar, and loose blue clothes (I shall find out whether this is true later), to be a non-smoker-I am, in fact, sure of that-a practical teetotaler, not without a nice discrimination based on the imagination rather than on ex

ame sounds, a Russian, but a French lady, née Robert, who married a Prince Serge Kouragine. He died some years ago. She is a lady of so much sense, and so ripe in wisdom and experience, that I felt her acquaintance must do any novelist good. I also introduced him to Mrs. Lennox, who is he

oing to make it a real book. He was going to write this novel for his own enjoyment, and not for the public. He would never publish it. He wo

ts this matter, in case he one day publishes the novel, or publishes what the novel may turn into; for I feel that it will not remain unpublished, ev

he said. I told him that he was mistaken. I had never met any of them,

arried? She must be getting on for thirty, if she is not th

d I have made my picture of her. Shall I tell it you, an

ad not always been blind, that my blindness had come comparatively late in life from a shooting accident, in which I lost one eye-the sight of the other

unfolded benea

m of Shelley at all. She was not ethereal nor diaphanous. She was a sapphire, not a moonstone. She belonged to the world of romance, not to the world of lyric poetry. Something had been left out when she had been created. She was unfinished. What had been left out? Was it her soul? Was it her heart? Was she Undine? No. Was she Lilith? No. All the same she belonged to

but she is muffled. You see, during that long slumber which lasted a hundred years--" Rudd had now quite forgotten my presence and was talking or, r

e has no hea

ess without any dreams. Do you think that would do as a title? No, it is not quite right. The Sleeping Beauty in the World? No. Why did Rostand use the title, La Princess

aintances and from my servant, but I imagined the end of the garden, where I had often walked, to be rather like a Russian landscape. I had never been to Russia, but I had read Russian books,

. So much more atmosphere. This little garden might be a piece

ia. Not in the flesh, he said, but in t

much the second-hand impressi

to the original s

randon not mar

nt's rheumatism. Mrs. Lennox had a house in London. She was a widow, not very well off, I thought. I told him I knew nothing of London life. I have lived in Ital

ry silent,

s very talkati

ony of impatience. "She has every beauty

rds escaped me and I imm

has nothing to express: or what she has got to express is not what we think it is. I imagine a story like Pygmalion and Galatea. Somebody waking her to life and then finding he

ames," I

a novelist. The French could do it. What would they have called it? La Princ

f, but I said aloud, "Out of the Wood woul

aid Rudd, quite gravely. "The kind

would be Eurydice Half-regained, but I was diffident about suggesting a title to him, besides which I felt he would not like