Tom
Abbott thought it a remarkable book for a woman to have written; a man
might have written it. Judge Lawton read it twice. Mortimer declined to
read it. He had not forgiven Gora; moreover, although his social position
was now planetary, it annoyed him excessively to hear his sister alluded to
continually as an author. Even the men at the club were reading the damned
book.
III
Bohemia stood off for some time. It was only recently they had learned that
Gora Dwight was a Californian. They had read her stories, but as she had
been the subject of no publicity whatever they had inferred that, like many
another, she had dwelt in their midst only long enough to acquire material.
When they learned the truth, and particularly after her inescapable
novel appeared, they were indignant that she had not sought her muse at
Carmel-by-the-Sea, or some other center of mutual admiration; affiliated
herself; announced herself, at the very least. There was a very sincere
feeling among them that any attempt on the part of a rank outsider to
achieve literary distinction was impertinent as well as unjustifiable....It
was impossible that he or she could be the real thing.
When they discovered that she was affiliated more or less with fashionable
society, nurse though she might be, and that those frivolous and negligible
beings were not only buying her book by the ton but giving her luncheons
and dinners and teas, their disgust knew no bounds and they tacitly agreed
that she should be tabu in the only circles where recognition counted.
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