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A_THING_OF_WIND_AND_LIGHT

     Sharon's frigid and easy grace dominated 
   that red hung room.  Her face was quite    
   expressionless now, and the black eyelashes
   flickered over cool, impersonal eyes.  She 
   became a thing of wind and light; that is  
   the only way it can be described.  Taking a
   cigarette from a silver box on a tabouret, 
   very calmly, she lighted it and closed the  
   lid of the box with a snap.               

                  "The Lost Gallows" (1931) 
                  by John Dickson Carr                          
                  Chapter 12 "The Mirth of the Murderer", p. 137
  
  And there you have          
  the Modern Woman         A few years later, Carr had lost     
  of the twenties...       interest in such things, and began    
                           writing about typically very British,    
                           very Nice Girls (though almost always  
                           Good Sports, you know), and not very 
                           Plucky ones, either:                     
                                                                
                          
                           This apology should come from that fact that 
                           on one point all the leading authorities are 
                           agreed: to introduce a heroine (whether or   
                           not the tale be fact) is bad.  Very bad.  As 
                           Henry Morgan says, you know what I mean: the 
                           gray-eyed, fearless Grace Darling with the   
                           cool philosophy, who likes to poke her nose  
                           into trouble and use a gun as well as the    
                           detective, and who requires the whole book to
                           make up her mind whether she is more than    
                           casually interested in the hero.             
                                                                    
                               John Dickson Carr (addressing the reader)
                               "The Eight of Swords" (1934)         
                               Chapter 8 "At the Chequers Inn", p.93





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