Three weeks later, Alayne Whiteoak sat alone in the living-room of the apartment which she shared with Rosamond Trent. She had just finished reading a new book, and she was about to write a review of it for one of the magazines. She wrote a good many reviews and short articles now, in addition to her work as reader for the publishing house of Cory and Parsons.
This was an English novel of Oxford undergraduates who waved white hands, who talked endlessly and cleverly, always on the verge of the risqué. She wished they had not sent her this particular book—but then it was only one of many like it. She felt that she could not do it justice because she had come to it prejudiced. It was not her sort of book. She sighed and looked at the books piled about her. She thought of the procession of books that, in the last year and a half, since her return to New York, had passed through her hands. A strangely dressed procession, carrying brazen "blurbs," trampling her spirit, tiring her.
She had none of the angry irritation of a professional reader whose own creative power is being stifled by continuous critical reading. She had little creative power in writing. She did not even desire it, but she wanted certain things from life which life apparently was to withhold from her. She wanted open space about her, and she wanted freedom to love. She desired spiritual growth.
When she had first come back to New York, her reaction from the troubled ingrown life at Jalna was a desire to submerge her personality in the routine of work, to drown in the roar of the city remembrance of that strange household—love of Renny Whiteoak. And
