'I don't know yet,' said Miss Martin, 'it just comes as I go on. It has
just got to come. It is a fourteen hours a day business. All writing. I
crib things from the French. Not whole stories. I take the opening
situation; say the two men in a boat on the river who hook up a sack. I
don't read the rest of the Frenchman, I work on from the sack, and guess
what was in it.'

'What was in the sack?'

'_In the Sack_! A name for a story! Anything, from the corpse of a
freak (good idea, corpse of a freak with no arms and legs, or with too
many) to a model of a submarine ship, or political papers. But I am
tired of corpses. They pervade my works. They give "a _bouquet_, a
fragrance," as Mr. Talbot Twysden said about his cheap claret.'

'You read the old Masters?'

'The obsolete Thackeray? Yes, I know him pretty well.'

'What are you publishing just now?'

'This to an author? Don't you know?'

'I blush,' said Logan.

'Unseen,' said Miss Martin, scrutinising him closely.

'Well, you do not read the serials to which I contribute,' she went on.
'I have two or three things running. There is _The Judge's Secret_.'