The informal office life of the magazine suited Bennett, not least because it brought him into lively female company, and he began to be a little more relaxed with young women. He continued work on his novel and wrote short stories and articles. He was clear-eyed about his literary talent: he wrote to a friend, "I have no inward assurance that I could ever do anything more than mediocre viewed strictly as art – very mediocre" but he knew he could "turn out things which would be read with zest, & about which the man in the street would say to friends 'Have you read so & so in the What-is-it?'" He was happy to write for popular journals like "Hearth and Home" or for the highbrow "The Academy".