She turned impatiently from the mirror and picked up a book that her “most intimate friend” had sent her several days before. She had not read it, because she had found that it commenced with a very modern love scene, and she never read love scenes. Miss Hungerford, who had a taste for epigram, once told her friend that “the science of reading is to know how to skip,” and she usually skipped the _lui et elle_ dialogues, but if they occurred in a classic, and she felt that she had no right to omit anything (she was a very conscientious sort of person) she summoned all her fortitude to aid her in getting through. Now she opened the book and read a few pages. After all, it did not seem absolutely repulsive. She decided that she had not given the book a fair trial, and she noticed with some surprise that, curiously enough from the description of him, the hero of the story must resemble Paul Stanhope. But when she found that she was thinking of Stanhope she put the book down. “I am certainly getting frivolous,” she thought severely. “I will go up to my study. I can think better there.” As she passed her little French clock, she noticed with a slight shudder that it was twenty minutes after four. She stopped suddenly and rang a bell. “I will make it easy for both of us,” she decided; “I will order tea served as usual, and I will just tell him very calmly how impossible it is for me to take upon myself any other career than that of a student and writer. No one can possibly be sentimental over a tea-urn and champagne biscuits,” she thought with relief. When the man appeared she gave him instructions to bring in the tea-things at five precisely. “That will make our interview short and yet give me time to settle it all at once and forever,” she thought. “Afterward we can discuss every-day affairs, and I am sure he will recognize how wisely I have acted, and we can be very good friends,” and she passed slowly up the stairs to her particular den. She felt stronger now, more certain of herself. The first sheets of her “curtain-raiser” were lying on her desk, and the sight of them encouraged her. For a moment a bewildering vision of a crowded theatre, a storm of applause, and herself, seated behind the curtains of a box, seeing, hearing her own piece, took possession of her. She even heard cries for the author, but of course her duty to herself and her family would prevent her appearing publicly as the writer of the play. She could see no objection, however, to being pointed out as “Miss Hungerford, you know, the brilliant young authoress.” Yes, life was a failure, art was everything! Nothing should ever come between her and her work.