, and
the deep stream that bubbles up of itself when it is once released,
and flows freely from the convictions, the observations, and the
knowledge of an earnest thinker. Diffidence is a help to some, but to
Beth it was a hindrance, a source of weakness. There was no fear of
her taking herself for a heaven-born genius. Her trouble had always
been her doubt of the merit of anything she did. She should have been
encouraged, but instead she had always been repressed. Accordingly,
when she had finished her little masterpiece, she put it away with the
idea of rewriting it, and making something of it when she should be
able; and then she began a much more pretentious work, and thought it
must be better because of the trouble it gave her.

Gradually, from now, she gave up all her time to reading and writing,
and she overdid it. Work in excess is as much a vice as idleness, and
it was particularly bad for Beth, whose constitution had begun to be
undermined by dutiful submission. The consulting rooms of specialists
are full of such cases. There are marriages which for the ignorant
girl preached into dutiful submission, whose "innocence" has been
carefully preserved for the purpose, mean prostitution as absolute, as
repugnant, as cruel, and as contrary to nature as that of the streets.
Beth's marriage was one of those. Until she went to Ilverthorpe, she
had never heard that there was a duty she owed to herself as well as
to her husband; and, as Sir George Galbraith had said, her brain was
too delicately poised for the life she had been leading. Work had been
her opiate; but unfortunately she did not understand the symptoms
which should have warned her that she was overdoing it, and her nerves
became exceedingly irritable. Noises which she had never noticed in
her life before began to worry her to death. Very often, when she was
spoken to, she could hardly answer civilly. At meals everything that
was handed to her was just the very thing she did not want. She
quarrelled with all her food, drank quantities of strong coffee for
the sake of the momentary exhilaration, and even tried wine; but as it
only made her feel worse, she gave that up. Writing became a rage with
her, and the more she had to force herself, the longer she sat at it.
She would spend hours over one sentence, turning it and twisting it,
and never be satisfied; and when she was at last obliged to stop and
go downstairs lest she should be missed, she went with her br