Then she sat down at her desk and tried to write. She remembered the keen sense of pleasure she always experienced when she had finished a sonnet or scene of a play, but she was thinking now of how she would receive Stanhope. “I will give him my hand in a very quiet, friendly way that will show at once what my decision is. Nothing shall make me alter or give up my career.” But it was very hard to give up everything, and she was very young and her friends thought her beautiful. Could there be no compromise? After all life need not be so dreary, and Paul Stanhope was distinctly the nicest and most eligible man she knew. Any number of girls liked him tremendously, and she sighed as she thought that she was keeping some girl from getting a very good husband indeed. This idea, though not wholly distasteful to her, brought her sharply back to her resolutions, and she picked up her Calderon. She had been reading it the day before and had left it turned down at the page. Suddenly a great pity for Calderon took possession of her. After all he was so dead now! Could he know how famous he was? Was he famous while he lived? Did his fame bring him love and happiness? She did not even know. Underneath the Calderon lay a copy of a poet’s works--a poet now famous and beloved, but who had died miserably poor and unknown. By the side of this volume lay the last number of a popular magazine. She had bought it because it contained a story by a man whom all the world was talking about. She had read in the morning’s paper that he had just been divorced from his wife. The sight of the book sickened her. She turned away and opened the case where she kept her Shakespeare, and took out a book at random. It was the sonnets. He, too, the greatest and wisest, had been wretchedly unhappy. Suddenly the futility of all effort took hold of her. Suppose she should drudge her life away, never taste of happiness, die, and be only known as “Hungerford the dramatist.” She shuddered. In the years to come many people might not even know whether “Hungerford” had been a man or a woman. But she could never hold up her head again if she should relinquish her “career” now. What would her friends think? She felt that she had burned her ships behind her when she had published her tragedy, and that the eyes of her world were upon her.