“Indeed!” An intuition shot like a conviction into Trent’s mind.  “Could her name, I wonder, by any chance be Coles?”

“You know her then?”

“I’ve met her, but do you mean to say that ability is what she hasn’t got?”

“For some things I’ve no doubt she has an amazing amount, only she’s mistaken its probable natural bent.  She strikes me as a woman who was born for the domestic hearth, or failing that she’d do admirably, I dare say, in a hospital.”

“It’s the literary instinct, then, that’s missing in her?”

“Not the instinct so much as the literary stuff, and in that she’s not different from a million others.  She is evidently on fire with the impulse to create, but the power—­the creative matter—­isn’t in her.  Let her keep up, and she’ll probably go on doing ‘hack’ work until her death.”

“But she’s so pretty,” urged Trent with a chivalric qualm—­and he remembered her smooth brown hair parted over her rosy ears, her blue eyes, fresh as flowers, and the peculiar steadfastness that possessed her face.

“The more’s the pity,” said Adams, while the muscles about his mouth twitched slightly, as they always did when he was deeply moved, “it’s a bigger waste.  I wrote to her as a father might have done and begged her to give it up,” he went on, “and in return,” he tapped the open sheet, “she sends me this fierce, pathetic little letter and informs me grandly that her life is dedicated.  Dedicated, good Lord!” he exclaimed compassionately, “dedicated to syndicated stories in the Sunday press and an occasional verse in the cheaper magazines.”

“And there’s absolutely nothing to be done?” asked Trent.

Adams met the question with a frown.

“Oh, if it would make it all come right in the end, I’d go on publishing her empty, trite little articles until Gabriel blows his trumpet.”

“It wouldn’t help, though, after all.”

“Well, hardly—­the quick way is sure to be the most merciful,” he laughed softly with the quality of kindly humour which never failed him, “we’ll starve her out as soon as possible,” he declared.

As if to dismiss the subject, he refolded the letter, slipped it in its envelope, and placed it in one of his crammed pigeon-holes.  “Thank God, your own case isn’t of the hopeless kind!” he exclaimed fervently.

“Somehow success looks like selfishness,” returned Trent, showing by his tone the momentary depression which settled so easily upon his variable moods.

At the speech Adams turned upon him the full sympathy of his smile, while he enclosed in a warm grasp the hand which the young man held out.

“It’s what we’re made for,” he responded cheerily, “success in one way or another.”