as I warmed to my work, and as my embarrassment left me, she no longer
spoke. Her eyes were fixed intently upon the blue space beyond the
lilac.

I read on and on, till at length my voice trailed over the last line,
rose gallantly at the last fence, the single word _Curtain_, and
abruptly broke. The strain had been too much for me.

Tenderly my mother drew me to the sofa; and quietly, with closed
eyelids, I lay there until, in the soft cool of the evening, I asked
for her verdict.

Seeing, as she did instantly, that it would be more dangerous to deny
my request than to accede to it, she spoke.

"That there is an absence, my dear Margie, of any relationship with
life, that not a single character is in any degree human, that passion
and virtue and vice and real feeling are wanting--this surprises me
more than I can tell you. I had expected to listen to a natural,
ordinary, unactable episode arranged more or less in steichomuthics.
There is no work so scholarly and engaging as the amateur's. But in
your play I am amazed to find the touch of the professional and
experienced playwright. Yes, my dear, you have proved that you happen
to possess the quality--one that is most difficult to acquire--of
surrounding a situation which is improbable enough to be convincing
with that absurdly mechanical conversation which the theatre-going
public demands. As your mother, I am disappointed. I had hoped for
originality. As your literary well-wisher, I stifle my maternal
feelings and congratulate you unreservedly."