Naturally I put the entire affair into a short story. And--though even to myself it seems incredible,--Miss Winwood wrote me within three days of the tale's appearance, a very indignant letter.
For she was furious, to the last exclamation point and underlining, about my little magazine tale.... "Why don't you stop writing, and try plumbing or butchering or traveling for scented soap? You can't write! If you had the light of creation you wouldn't be using my material"....
--Which caused me to reflect forlornly that I had wasted a great deal of correct behavior upon Marian, since any of the more intimately amorous advances which I might have made, and had scrupulously refrained from making, would very probably have been regarded as raw "material," to be developed rather than shocked by....
