In one sense all fiction is imaginative. There is, however, a species in which pure imagination plays a much greater part than in the Community Novel, in Historical Fiction, or in the other types discussed in this chapter. Marjorie Pickthall’s work is the highest example of this. She wrote, not with the reproductive imagination nor with fancy, but with the faculty defined by Matthew Arnold as imaginative reason. Into the texture of her fiction she wove poetic imagination and poetic significance derived from her clear, absolute, and sympathetic understanding of the human heart and of the hidden springs and the meaning of existence, from her superior and inclusive sympathetic intelligence. Thus she was enabled to write stories of the most varied settings and of the most wildly differing characters with equal convincingness. _Little Hearts_ (1915), is an engaging tale of the days of ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ with its conflict chiefly between loyalty to the Crown, and fidelity to the spirit of humanity. It pictures ‘little hearts,’ men of small fortunes, and small (as the world sees it) ambitions, in their pathetic existence, more pathetic because of finely brave in the midst of many both petty and heroic vicissitudes of fortune, of mean victory and noble defeat. The novel preaches no didactic moral but it silently teaches Christ’s philosophy of struggle and defeat—‘He that loseth his life shall find it.’ It impresses unforgettably how little after all are the greatest hearts, and how little we lose or gain in any defeat or triumph which is merely earthly defeat or triumph. _The Bridge_ (1922), has the same theme, with the pain and cruelty of love, of unfulfilled seeking, and the final triumph of a soul that saved itself by losing itself in inward self-knowledge and self-sacrifice. It is set against a background of the tremendous beauty of the Great Lakes, scenes of storm on land and water. Technically, it is farther from perfection than _Little Hearts_; it has less structural unity, less smoothness of style. At times the emotional situations seem overdrawn; nor are atmosphere and setting definitively localized. The collection of short stories—_Angel’s Shoes_ (1922)—embodies examples of Miss Pickthall’s perfect artistry as a short story writer. These stories are clear, vivid, colorful, and of almost the highest type of creative imagination. They may lack, occasionally, a warmth of humanity that is present in the work of other writers of poorer craftsmanship.