But there is something shamefully immoral in our business methods, when an employee after years of faithful service can be flung out without a chance for a word of defence. It is as though our father should unexpectedly open the door of his home and bid us begone forever. And is not our employer our business father, from whom we have a right to expect consideration? Does he owe us nothing more than our weekly wage? Must his relation to us be always measured only by dollars and cents? Among the letters Mrs. Doring took with her from the office unopened was one from Bardell, now in Paris, famous and prosperous beyond his dreams. Strange irony of fate that brought to her his glad story of fresh successes on the day that carried defeat to her. With the superstition common to Bohemia Bardell considered Cartice his mascot. His letters were always frank, friendly and charming. His last words were: “Follow your ideals. They will lead you into freedom.” This reminded her of her book. It was finished long since; but the writing was scarcely half the battle. It languished for want of a publisher. Those to whom it had been submitted, had returned it, one and all, with the contempt, but thinly veiled with regrets, it had excited in their infallible minds. One plainer spoken and less heavily veneered with the world’s polish than the rest, said to her face: “Come now, Mrs. Doring, you mustn’t expect anybody to publish stuff of that kind--digging into the meaning of life, higher methods of evolution, ‘shall we live after we die?,’ ‘ultimate destiny of the human race,’ and all such heavy timber. People take no interest in these questions. What we want is a rattling good love-story, with plenty of hugging and kissing in it. I like that in or out of a novel myself. There must be some iron-clad obstructionists in it, too, cruel parents or other able marplots, and the hero must get her in the last chapter or sooner. Anything but a story that doesn’t end all right. The public abhors it. Now, your book is loaded with high-up, mountain-peak thought, and wouldn’t sell at all.” Another, with whom also, she had a personal interview, a young man with extraordinary faith in his own wisdom, smiled as he returned her manuscript, and made his smile so vocative it needed few accompanying words. “It is, ah--you know, Mrs. Doring, so wide a departure from the standard of art in fiction, that it might make even a publisher ridiculous, to say nothing of the author. One must keep somewhere within sight of the existing canons. This, if you will pardon me, flies in the face of every one of them.” “I dare say,” answered Cartice. “I never troubled myself about the existing canons. It is life as I know it that I have tried to portray; not life as somebody else says it should be painted in books.” After a number of equally disheartening experiences, the book was carefully laid aside to await the judgment day.