e shrieks of the heroine; no set scenes
of catching pathos and humour; no distinguishable points of social
satire--equivalent to a smacking of the public on the chaps, which
excites it to grin with keen discernment of the author's intention. She
did not appeal to the senses nor to a superficial discernment. So she
had the anticipatory sense of its failure; and she wrote her best,
in perverseness; of course she wrote slowly; she wrote more and more
realistically of the characters and the downright human emotions, less
of the wooden supernumeraries of her story, labelled for broad guffaw
or deluge tears--the grappling natural links between our public and an
author. Her feelings were aloof. They flowed at a hint of a scene of THE
YOUNG MINISTER. She could not put them into THE CANTATRICE. And Arthur
Rhodes pronounced this work poetical beyond its predecessors, for the
reason that the chief characters were alive and the reader felt their
pulses. He meant to say, they were poetical inasmuch as they were
creations.

The slow progress of a work not driven by the author's feelings
necessitated frequent consultations between Debit and Credit, resulting
in altercations, recriminations, discord of the yoked and divergent
couple. To restore them to their proper trot in harness, Diana
reluctantly went to her publisher for an advance item of the sum she was
to receive, and the act increased her distaste. An idea came that she
would soon cease to be able to write at all. What then? Perhaps by
selling her invested money, and ultimately The Crossways, she would have
enough for her term upon earth. Necessarily she had to think that
short, in order to reckon it as nearly enough. 'I am sure,' she said to
herself, 'I shall not trouble the world very long.' A strange languor
beset her; scarcely melancholy, for she conceived the cheerfulness of
life and added to it in company; but a nervelessness, as though she had
been left by the stream on the banks, and saw beauty and pleasure sweep
along and away, while the sun that primed them dried her veins. At this
time she was gaining her widest reputation for brilliancy of wit. Only
to welcome guests were her evenings ever spent at home. She had no
intimate understanding of the deadly wrestle of the conventional woman
with her nature which she was undergoing below the surface. Perplexities
she acknowledged, and the prudence of guardedness. 'But as I am sure not
to live very long, we may as well meet