heaven knows what, that she comes here and starves in an attic rather
than keep away in comfort. That reminds me," he added, with a sudden
recollection, "she's from your part of the country."

"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.