Margaret started a little.  Again the doubt seized her if she were not making a mistake, undertaking more than she could well carry through, for this shy authoress was fast developing unexpected traits.  However, Margaret, once she had started, was not easily turned back.  She was as persistently clinging as a sweet briar.

“Oh, my dear,” she said, and her voice was like trickling honey, “only wait until you are a little older and you will find that you do care, care very, very much.  The understanding and sympathy of other women will become very sweet to you.  It is so pure and ennobling, so free from all material taint.”

“I have seen a great many women who were perfect cats,” stated Miss Martha Wallingford.

“Wait until you are older,” said Margaret again and her voice seemed fairly dissolving into some spiritual liquid of divine sweetness.  “Wait until you are older, my dear.  You are very young, so young to have accomplished a wonderful work which will live.”

“Oh, well,” said Martha Wallingford, and as she spoke she fixed pitiless shrewd young eyes upon the face of the other woman, which did not show at its best, in spite of veil and the velvety darkness of hat-shadow.  This hotel sitting-room was full of garish cross lights.  “Oh, well,” said Martha Wallingford, “of course, I don’t know what may happen if I live to be old, as old as you.”

Margaret Edes felt like a photograph proof before the slightest attempt at finish had been made.  Those keen young eyes conveyed the impression of convex mirrors.  She restrained an instinctive impulse to put a hand before her face, she had an odd helpless sensation before the almost brutal, clear-visioned young thing.  Again she shrank a little from her task, again her spirit reasserted itself.  She moved and brought her face somewhat more into the shadow.  Then she spoke again.  She wisely dropped the subject of feminine affinities.  She plunged at once into the object of her visit, which directly concerned Miss Martha Wallingford, and Margaret, who was as astute in her way as the girl, knew that she was entirely right in assuming that Martha Wallingford was more interested in herself than anything else in the world.

“My dear,” she said, “I may as well tell you at once why I intruded upon you this morning.”

“Please do,” said Martha Wallingford.

“As I said before, I deeply regret that I was unable to bring some well-known person, Mrs. Fay-Wyman, for instance, to make us acquainted in due form, but—­”

“Oh, I don’t care a bit about that,” said Martha.  “What is it?”

Margaret again started a little.  She had not expected anything like this.  The mental picture which she had formed of Martha Wallingford, the young literary star, seemed to undergo a transformation akin to an explosion, out of which only one feature remained intact—­the book, “Hearts Astray.”  If Miss Wallingford had not possessed a firm foundation in that volume, it is entirely possible that Margaret might have abandoned her enterprise.  As it was, after a little gasp she went on.