uely. "I don't
know," she said. "What can I do with it?"

"Publish it, if it is good," he answered.

"But how am I to know?" Beth asked eagerly. "Do you think it possible
I could do anything fit to publish?"

Before he could reply, Dan chimed in. "I've just been telling her," he
said, "that little heads like hers can't contain books. It's all very
well to scribble a little for pastime, and all that, but she mustn't
seriously imagine she can do that sort of work. She'll only do herself
harm. Literature is men's work."

"Yet how many women have written, and written well, too," Beth
observed.

"Oh yes, of course--exceptional women."

"And why mayn't I be an exceptional woman?" Beth asked, smiling.

"Coarse and masculine!" Dan exclaimed. "No, thank you. We don't want
you to be one of that kind--do we, Galbraith?"

"There is not the slightest fear," Sir George answered dryly.
"Besides, I don't think any class of women workers--not even the
pit-brow women--are necessarily coarse and masculine. And I differ
from you, too, with regard to that head," he added, fixing his keen,
kindly eyes deliberately on Beth's cranium till she laughed to cover
her embarrassment, and put up both hands to feel it. "I should say
there was good promise both of sense and capacity in the size and
balance of it--not to mention anything else."

"Well, you ought to know if anybody does," said Dan with a facetious
sort of affectation of agreement, which left no doubt of his
insincerity.

"I wish," Sir George continued, addressing Beth, "you would let me
show some of your work to a lady, a friend of mine, whose opinion is
well worth having."

"I would rather have yours," Beth jerked out.

"Oh, mine is no good," he rejoined. "But if you will let me read what
you give me to show my lady, I should be greatly interested. We were
talking about style in prose the other day, and I have ventured to
bring you these books--some of our own stylists, and some modern
Frenchmen. You read French, I know."

"There is nothing like the French," Dan chimed in. "We have no
literature at all now. Look at their work compared to ours, how short,
crisp, and incisive it is! How true to life! A Frenchman will give you
more real life in a hundred pages than our men do in all their
interminable volumes."

"More sexuality, you mean, I suppose," said Galbraith, "Personally I
find them monotonous, and barren of happy phrases to enrich the mind,
of noble sentiments t