She wished she were not so stylish and so distressingly well off in this world’s goods. Geniuses, she reflected, were always ugly and poor. Only lately had it come to be considered not infra dig. to grow rich off one’s brains. She would have liked to be an old-time ugly, poverty-stricken genius. As that could not be, however (her family might have objected to being dispossessed of a most generous income), the best thing she could do was to work on to the end. Better to die in harness, nobly striving after perfection, than to live to an ingloriously happy old age. She saw herself a melancholy woman, whose youth and beauty had fled before the exhausting demands of her genius. Fame had come, but too late. Her name was on every lip, but death awaited her. Nothing was left her but to choose her biographer and epitaph. She had long thought that the lines (adapted) from the “Adonais” would be very appropriate: “Peace, peace! she is not dead, she doth not sleep; She hath awakened from the dream of life!” She considered them very sweet, and Shelley had always been one of her gods. There was a sort of poetical justice in the selection. She felt very sad and firm. Just then someone tapped at the door, and a card was handed her. She trembled a little as she took it, but there was no change in her voice as she told the man to take Mr. Stanhope to the library and that she would be down immediately. But she did not go at once. She stopped at her own door and went to the mirror, where she loosened her hair a little at the sides, and after looking critically at the effect, she went slowly down the stairs. At each step she repeated to herself “I must be firm. My career before everything.” She was saying this over to herself for the twentieth time when she found, rather to her dismay, that she was at the door. Pushing aside the curtains, she extended her hand as she planned to do, but something in Stanhope’s expression as he came quickly toward her made her falter and let it drop to her side. The next thing she knew he had his arms around her and she was not repulsing him. He had not given her the least chance to explain, she thought indignantly. She would never have allowed it if he had given her a moment’s time! As for Stanhope, no idea of explanation entered his head. He saw no necessity for one.