"It's perfect," I answered with a secret
thrill, yet feeling a little foolish. This was for Gibbon or Carlyle,
rather than for my potboiling insignificancies. "If I can't write
masterpieces here, it's certainly not your fault," and I turned with
gratitude to Mrs. Franklyn. She was looking straight at me, and there
was a question in her small pale eyes I did not understand. Was she
noting the effect upon me, I wondered?
"You'll write here--perhaps a story about the house," she said,
"Thompson will bring you anything you want; you only have to ring." She
pointed to the electric bell on the central table, the wire running
neatly down the leg. "No one has ever worked here before, and the
library has been hardly used since it was put in. So there's no previous
atmosphere to affect your imagination--er--adversely."
We laughed. "Bill isn't that sort," said my sister; while I wished they
would go out and leave me to arrange my little nest and set to work.
I thought, of course, it was the huge listening library that made me
feel so inconsiderable--the fifteen thousand silent, staring books, the
solemn aisles, the deep, eloquent shelves. But when the women had gone
and I was alone, the beginning of the truth crept over me, and I felt
that first hint of disconsolateness which later became an imperative No.
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