Her heart beat furiously, her head was in a whirl; she stared hard, for calmness, into the swift-passing night outside. Presently she recognized herself to be angry with an intense still jealous anger that seemed to rise and consume her in every part of her being. A success--of course it would be a success if Janet wrote it--she was not artistic enough to fail. Ah, should Janet's friend go so far as to say that? She didn't know--she would think afterward; but Janet was of those who succeed, and there were more ways than one of deserving success. Janet was a compromise; she belonged really to the British public and the class of Academy studies from the nude which were always draped, just a little. Elfrida found a bitter satisfaction in this simile, and elaborated it. The book would be one to be commended for _jeunes filles_, and her lips turned down mockingly in the shadow. She fancied some well-meaning critic saying, "It should be on every drawing-room table," and she almost laughed outright. She thought of a number of other little things that might be said, of the same nature and equally amusing. Her anger flamed up again at the thought of how Janet had concealed this ambition from her, had made her, in a way, the victim of it. It was not fair--not fair! She could have prepared herself against it; she might have got _her_ book ready sooner, and its triumphant editions might at least have come out side by side with Janet's. She was just beginning to feel that they were neck and neck, in a way, and now Janet had shot so far ahead, in a night, in a paragraph. She could never, never catch up! And from under her closed eyelids two hot tears started and ran over her cold cheeks. It came upon her suddenly that she was sick with jealousy, not envy, but pure anger at being distanced, and she tried to attack herself about it. With a strong effort she heaped opprobrium and shame upon herself, denounced herself, tried to hate herself. But she felt that it was all a kind of dumb-show, and that under it nothing could change the person she was or the real feeling she had about this--nothing except being first. Ah! then she could be generous and loyal and disinterested; then she could be really a nice person to know, she derided herself. And as her foot touched the little hand-bag on the floor she took a kind of sullen courage, which deserted her when she folded the paper on her lap and was struck again in the face with Lash and Black's advertisement on the outside page announcing Janet's novel in letters that looked half a foot long. Then she resigned herself to her wretchedness till the train sped into the glory of Paddington. "I hope you're not bad, miss," remarked the small boy's mother as they pushed toward the door together; "them Banburys don't agree with everybody."