The Pride of Eve by Warwick Deeping

Saturday afternoons and Sundays gave the pause in Eve's week of scribbling and reading, and drawing at desk and table. She was infinitely glad of the leisure when it came, only to discover that it often brought a retrospective sadness that could not be conjured away.

Sometimes she went to a matinée or a concert on Saturday afternoon, alternating these breaks with afternoons of hard work. For the Fernhill days, with their subsequent pain and restlessness had left her with a definite ambition. She regarded her present life as a means to an end. She did not intend to be always a scribbler of extracts and a copier of old woodcuts, but had visions of her own art spreading its wings and lifting her out of the crowd. She tried to paint on Sundays, struggling with the atmosphere of Bosnia Road, and attempting to make use of the north light in her back bedroom, while she enlarged and elaborated some of the rough sketches in her sketch book. Her surroundings were trite and dreary enough, but youth and ardour are marvellous torch-bearers, and many a fine thing has been conceived and carried through in a London lodging-house. She had plans for hiring a little studio somewhere, or even of persuading Mrs. Buss, her landlady, to let her have a makeshift shed put up in the useless patch of back garden.