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Rh suppose it is that authorship is reckoned as one of the bad habits of an emancipated woman."

Jacob Worse again began to lose his self-command. 'I don't mind your calling me a coward, Miss Garman. But when you think, or pretend to think, that I am not speaking more seriously than some of these"

"No, no; sit down, I beg you," said Rachel, anxiously, putting her hand on his arm. "I did not mean any harm, but I am so suspicious. I beg pardon. There, now, don't think any more about it. You really do think, then, that I ought to write?"

"I am quite sure you ought," answered Worse, who soon became quiet again. "You have so much originality and so much energy, that you will be able to overcome every difficulty, and in courage you are certainly not wanting."

Amid the whirl of the dance around them, these encouraging words sounded doubly strange in her ears, and seemed to open out new vistas before her.

"But what have I got to write about? What do I know that the world does not know already? No, you really must be wrong, Mr. Worse. It is beyond me;" and she looked down at her dress, and could not help feeling that Worse was becoming rather dull.

"It is not very easy to say beforehand what your subject ought to be," said he; "but it is clear that there are endless things that the world can only learn from a woman, and which it seems to be expecting to hear. For you it is but to have the will. You are now passing through a crisis in your life, and you have such a fund of energy"