I went out of our little garden, and stood on the cliff. The wind flew
at me like some wild thing. Spray stung my face. I was filled with a
wild exhilaration.

And then the idea came to me. The simplest, most dramatic idea. Quaint,
whimsical, with just that suggestion of pathos blended with it which
makes the fortunes of a play. The central idea, to be brief, of _The
Girl who Waited_.

Of my Maenad tramp along the cliff-top with my brain afire, and my
return, draggled and dripping, an hour late for dinner; of my writing
and re-writing, of my tears and black depression, of the pens I wore
out and the quires of paper I spoiled, and finally of the ecstasy of
the day when the piece began to move and the characters to live, I need
not speak. Anyone who has ever written will know the sensations. James
must have gone through a hundred times what I went through once. At
last, at long last, the play was finished.

For two days I gloated alone over the great pile of manuscript.

Then I went to my mother.

My diffidence was exquisite. It was all I could do to tell her the
nature of my request, when I spoke to her after lunch. At last she
understood that I had written a play, and wished to read it to her. She
took me to the bow-window with gentle solicitude, and waited for me to
proceed.

At first she encouraged me, for I faltered over my opening words. But