A great work was certainly seldom, if ever, accomplished under such curious and such self-contradictory conditions. A man and a woman have frequently worked together before, and worked effectively and harmoniously, but they have either been in the relationship of husband and wife, of avowed lovers, independent of or having deliberately cast aside other ties, or they have been free to work together as friends owing to the fact that circumstances have left them unhampered by family conditions. The peculiarity of the present case is that the relations of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland subsisted in spite of the existence of a husband for whom his wife had a very genuine and warm affection, and who most undoubtedly reciprocated it to the full—in spite also of the fact that the husband was fully aware of, and approved of, all that took place, without seeing anything in it to lessen his esteem for his wife or compromise their relationship—in spite also of the fact that the society of the day held up its hands in horror at the scandal and more than suspected immorality where there was none to suspect—in spite, finally, of the fact that, joined to the respect and friendly feeling which Edward Maitland felt for the husband, there was something in his whole attitude and demeanour towards Anna Kingsford which was more in the nature of the devotion of a lover to his mistress than anything else which the ordinary terms of language can express. When Anna Kingsford passed away to another sphere early indeed in life (she was but forty-two), but with her life’s work accomplished, the two who joined hands over her grave and who mourned her most deeply and most sincerely were the devoted husband who loved her without understanding the most remarkable side of her character, and the friend who loved and understood, but, better even than the woman whom he loved, loved the work of which her presence and being were to him the divine symbol and seal. People of the type of Anna Bonus Kingsford are too sensitive and impressionable ever to be really happy for long. The acuteness of their feelings exaggerates their own sufferings, and at the same time makes the consciousness of the sufferings of others an ever present torture and martyrdom. Mrs Kingsford’s life, indeed, at times when her health, always far from robust, was below the usual level, became absolutely unbearable. The thought of bringing a child into the world to share her own anguish and despair seemed in itself a crime. I long (she writes, in one of these moods of depression), I long for a little rest and peace. The world has grown very bitter to me. I feel as if every one were dead! Ah, what a life is before me!—a life of incessant struggle, reproach, and loneliness. I shall never be as other women, happy in their wifehood and motherhood. Never to my dying day shall I know the meaning of a home.