‘I?  Oh dear no; I never write anything.’

’I have sometimes wondered whether I have hated or loved it the most.  One becomes so absorbed in one’s plot and one’s characters!  One loves the loveable so intensely, and hates with such fixed aversion those who are intended to be hated.  When the mind is attuned to it, one is tempted to think that it is all so good.  One cries at one’s own pathos, laughs at one’s own humour, and is lost in admiration at one’s own sagacity and knowledge.’

‘How very nice!’

’But then there comes the reversed picture, the other side of the coin.  On a sudden everything becomes flat, tedious, and unnatural.  The heroine who was yesterday alive with the celestial...