ishness. The optimist
folds his smug hands on his ample knees, and murmurs contentedly,
"The Lord has willed it;" "There must always be rich and poor;"
"Nature has, after all, her great law of compensation." The
pessimist knows well self-deception like that is either a fraud or
a blind, and recognizing the seething mass of misery at his doors
gives what he can,--his pity, or, where possible, his faint aid, in
redressing the crying inequalities and injustices of man or nature.

All honest art is therefore of necessity pessimistic. Herminia's
romance was something more than that. It was the despairing
heart-cry of a soul in revolt. It embodied the experiences and
beliefs and sentiments of a martyred woman. It enclosed a lofty
ethical purpose. She wrote it with fiery energy, for her baby's
sake, on waste scraps of paper, at stray moments snatched from
endless other engagements. And as soon as it was finished, she sent
it in fear and trembling to a publisher.

She had chosen her man well. He was a thinker himself, and he
sympathized with thinkers. Though doubtful as to the venture, he
took all the risk himself with that generosity one so often sees in
the best-abused of professions. In three or four weeks' time "A
Woman's World" came out, and Herminia waited in breathless anxiety
for the verdict of the reviewers.

For nearly a month she waited in vain. Then, one Friday, as she
was returning by underground railway from the Strand to Edgeware
Road, with Dolores in her arms, her eye fell as she passed upon the
display-bill of the "Spectator." Sixpence was a great deal of
money to Herminia; but bang it went recklessly when she saw among
the contents an article headed, "A Very Advanced Woman's Novel."
She felt sure it must be hers, and she was not mistaken.
Breathlessly she ran over that first estimate of her work.
It was with no little elation that she laid down the number.

Not that the critique was by any means at all favorable. How could
Herminia expect it in such a quarter? But the "Spectator" is at
least conspicuously fair, though it remains in other ways an
interesting and ivy-clad mediaeval relic. "Let us begin by
admitting," said the Spectatorial scribe, "that Miss Montague's
book" (she had published it under a pseudonym) "is a work of
genius. Much as we dislike its whole tone, and still more its
conclusions, the gleam of pure genius shines forth undeniable on
every page of it. Whoever takes it up must