Meanwhile things went on in an outwardly even and uneventful course. Innocent worked steadily to fulfil certain contracts into which she had entered with the publishers who were eager to obtain as much of her work as she could give them,--but she had lost heart, and her once soaring ambition was like a poor bird that had been clumsily shot at, and had fallen to the ground with a broken wing. What she had dreamed of as greatness, now seemed vain and futile. The "Amadis de Jocelin" of the sixteenth century had taught her to love literature--to believe in it as the refiner of thought and expression, and to use it as a charm to inspire the mind and uplift the soul,--but the Amadis de Jocelyn of the twentieth had no such lessons to teach. Utterly lacking in reverence for great thinkers, he dismissed the finest passages of poetry or prose from his consideration with light scorn as "purple patches," borrowing that hackneyed phrase from the lower walks of the press,--the most inspired writers, both of ancient and modern times, came equally under the careless lash of his derision,--so that Innocent, utterly bewildered by his sweeping denunciation of many brilliant and famous authors, shrank into her wounded self with pain, humiliation and keen disappointment, feeling that there was certainly no chance for her to appeal to him in any way through the thoughts she cherished and expressed with truth and fervour to a listening world. That world listened--but HE did not!--therefore the world seemed worthless and its praise mere mockery. She had no vanity to support her,--she was not "strong-minded" enough to oppose her own individuality to that of the man she loved. And so she began to droop a little,--her bright and ardent spirit sank like a sinking flame,--much to the concern of Miss Leigh, who watched her with a jealous tenderness of love beyond all expression. The child of Pierce Armitage, lawfully or unlawfully begotten, was now to her the one joy of existence,--the link that fastened her more closely to life,--and she worried herself secretly over the evident listlessness, fatigue and depression of the girl who had so lately been the very embodiment of happiness. But she did not like to ask questions,--she knew that Innocent had a very resolute mind of her own, and that if she elected to remain silent on any subject whatsoever, nothing, not even the most affectionate appeal, would induce her to speak.