“Don’t, for heaven’s sake, don’t begin to look on it in that way! Happily you are under no such vile necessity. Rejoice in your freedom. No man can bid you write your worst, that the public may be caught.” “Yet not long ago you made light of my efforts just because I was not dependent on literature.” “I have seen since that you mean serious things. Beggary is an aid to no one; if it impels to work, it embitters the result. With the flow of a hungry man’s inspiration there cannot but mingle something of the salt of tears. One’s daily bread at least must be provided--I don’t say one’s daily banquet. If the absence of need checks your creative impulse, it doesn’t greatly matter; in that case you would never have done anything worth speaking of. No, no; rejoice in your freedom. Thank heaven that you can live, as old Landor says, ‘Beyond the arrows, shouts, and views of men.’” There was silence; then he asked: “Have you sent the paper to Mrs. Clarendon?” Ada replied with a negative. He kept his eyes from her, and stirred in his seat. “You think she would not care to see it?” “I don’t think she would.” “Do you remember,” he began, with uncertain voice, “that not long ago I was going to ask you to do something to please me.” “I remember it.” “Can you guess what that was?” She did not answer at once. Her face showed inner movements of conflicting kinds; she seemed to struggle to banish that hardness of expression which fixed her features against an unwelcome thought. “Had it,” she asked at length, “anything to do with Mrs. Clarendon?” “Yes, Ada, it had. You do not like her. One’s likes and dislikes cannot easily be altered to suit another’s wish, but if by any means I could bring you to kind thoughts of her, I think I should be content to forget every other hope that life still nourishes in me.” She did not speak. “Can you be open enough with me to say why it is you dislike her?” He spoke very softly and kindly, and with a hint of things which could not but touch a listener. Ada began with trembling: “It seems to have grown with me. I shrank from her when, as a child, I was first brought into her presence. Her look was contemptuous, cruel; for all that I was such a poor, helpless creature, and should have moved her pity. Since I have known everything, she has seemed to me the more to be blamed I cannot sympathise with her, though I know others do. There is no motive in her life that seems to me noble or lovable. I think her selfish; I think she has brought upon herself all her troubles by her deliberate choice of lower things. I may miss the better points in her character; I am intensely prejudiced.” Meres listened with pain which at length compelled him to turn his head away. Ada would not look at him. She knew what she was inflicting, but could not stay her tongue sooner. One of the million forms of jealousy fretted her, and jealousy is cruel.