“Yes. To do it, of course, I shall go to jail for two or three years!”
“But how can you get in?” we asked, thrilled at the quiet determination of the frail woman before us.
“I shall demand it as a right,” she answered quietly. “I shall go to the authorities, at the head of a band of enthusiastic women, and demand that I shall be sent to jail. Surely after the work I have done, that much is coming to me.”
“It certainly is,” we said warmly.
We rose to go.
Both the novelists shook hands with us with great cordiality. Mr. Afterthought walked as far as the front door with us and showed us a short cut past the beehives that could take us directly through the bull pasture to the main road.
We walked away in the gathering darkness of evening very quietly. We made up our mind as we went that novel writing is not for us. We must reach the penitentiary in some other way.
But we thought it well to set down our interview as a guide to others.
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