stinct advance;
for, after she reflected upon all that Mildred had told her, little of
her former opinion of Mildred's chances for success had remained but a
hope detained not without difficulty. Mrs. Belloc knew the human race
unusually well for a woman--unusually well for a human being of
whatever sex or experience. She had discovered how rare is the
temperament, the combination of intelligence and tenacity, that makes
for success. She had learned that most people, judged by any standard,
were almost total failures, that most of the more or less successful
were so merely because the world had an enormous amount of important
work to be done, even though half-way, and had no one but those
half-competents to do it. As incompetence in a man would be tolerated
where it would not be in a woman, obviously a woman, to get on, must
have the real temperament of success.

She now knew enough about Mildred to be able to "place" her in the
"lady" class--those brought up not only knowing how to do nothing with
a money value (except lawful or unlawful man-trapping), but also
trained to a sensitiveness and refinement and false shame about work
that made it exceedingly difficult if not impossible for them to learn
usefulness. She knew all Mildred's handicaps, both those the girl was
conscious of and those far heavier ones which she fatuously regarded as
advantages. How was Mildred ever to learn to dismiss and disregard
herself as the pretty woman of good social position, an object of
admiration and consideration? Mildred, in the bottom of her heart, was
regarding herself as already successful--successful at the highest a
woman can achieve or ought to aspire to achieve--was regarding her
career, however she might talk or might fancy she believed, as a mere
livelihood, a side issue. She would be perhaps more than a little
ashamed of her stage connections, should she make any, until she should
be at the very top--and how get to the top when one is working under
the handicap of shame? Above all, how was this indulgently and
shelteredly reared lady to become a working woman, living a routine
life, toiling away day in and day out, with no let up, permitting no
one and nothing to break her routine? "Really," thought Agnes Belloc,
"she ought to have married that Baird man--or stayed on with the nasty
general. I wonder why she didn't! That's the only thing that gives me
hope. There must be something in her--something that don't
ap