She had intended to tell him at once of Charlotte's kindly plan to interest Mrs. North in her work; she had been impatient to tell him, and her announcement of Charlotte's return, and Mrs. North's arrival with her, had been meant only as the preface to the confidence. She had been so sure of his sympathy, of his ambition for her and his pleasure in this opportunity to test her power. His real attitude toward the achievements of women she had never suspected. He had so gladly and gratefully accepted her help in his own work, he had so generously acknowledged her ability, that she had never conceived of any sex distinction in his views. She had been his comrade--now he would be hers. And oh, she would make him proud of her! She would see his eyes light for her as, sometimes, she had seen them light over the story of men's successes. For Ted loved success. If she looked forward to triumphs, he was always at the heart of them. Whatever she could do would be done more for his honor than for her own. Whatever was rare and fine in her she had come to value first because she was his wife--and afterward for her own profit. She imagined herself, crowned by Mrs. North's praise, returning to Ted to cry: "It is the real, the true thing--my gift! I will do beautiful work. Oh, dearest, I have more to bring you than I dared to believe!" So her impetuous mind had run onward to meet happy possibilities when Ted arrested it with the comment, "I don't care for that sort of woman myself--at least for that sort of married woman!" And at the words, Sheila's dreams had fallen, like broken-winged birds, to the ground. For a moment--nay, through all the conversation that followed, a conversation that revealed to her with cruel clarity a phase of her husband's mind that she had not hitherto encountered--she was wondering if those dreams would ever rise again. Rude and stupid blows from the hand she loved best had struck them down. How could they recover themselves? How could they sing and soar--those fragile, shattered things? But even as she glimpsed them thus, broken, defeated, there surged up within her the strength of resistance. Sweetly compliant in all the common affairs of her and Ted's joint life, she had, for this issue so vital to her, an amazing obstinacy. Defeated? She and her dreams? _No_! Her dreams were her own, born of her as surely as the children of her body would be. They were hers to save--hers to realize. And she was strong enough to do it! That had been her thought when she withdrew herself from Ted's knee. His whisper--"The greatest thing that can happen to a woman is motherhood!"--had inspired no tenderness in her. For at that moment there was astir within her, violent and dominant, the impulse that is mightier than motherhood itself--the impulse of _creation_. And it was none the less imperative because it demanded to mould with written words rather than living flesh.