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 odd. But you have so much ability and yet you are ready...' Pauline's hands clenched...'to let it—rot. Rot, I say—rot.'

Lanice answered meekly. 'I know I have some ability. Perhaps if I were a man I could do something with it. There is something wrong with women and I can't put my finger on it—only feel it, in myself and in others. It isn't that we haven't the brains—or even the emotional force—but I'm afraid we are too sensible. Frankly, I'd much rather live a comfortable life now—while I am alive—than starve in a garret and be worshipped for centuries. Or suppose success came during my life. What pleasure to me that every one stop and gape when I come into a room or climb trees with opera glasses to spy upon me—the way they do at poor, dour Tennyson? We lack the divine childishness of men that drives them to sacrifice their own health as well as their families for such phantoms as art and fame. I think the great artists never outgrow adolescence—never grow up...see things disproportionately, my picture, my book, my immortal four lines.'

'You are a pagan...Lanice, shame upon you.'

'Perhaps I am,' she confessed, and thought swiftly and poignantly of Roger Cuncliffe—who was dead. 'Pauline,' she said, without bothering to make the connection between her last sentence and her next, 'I want to tell you something. When Anthony Jones left me, I found he had pulled down everything—my whole house of life. He had moved out all the furniture and left everything strewn about like children's