Miss Strongith’will would be very indignant—very angry—if any one suggested that she ever wanted a husband; not that she has anything but respect and admiration for the domestic affections, for the peaceful beauties of home, for the lovely relations of parents and children, brothers and sisters. But she would resent the implication that she could not have been married had she so desired. As a matter of fact, she has had love affairs and offers of marriage; but those which she had before experience and critical judgment had tempered her susceptibility, were of the ineligible order—the medical student with a practice in prospect, the briefless barrister, the young artist who ought to be “on the line,” if only the Academicians were not so jealous, and so on. But these were in the days when a dance would lure her from any studies, when she was not above being flattered by the attentions of a “nice young man,” and before she had realised that “life is earnest, life is real, life is not an empty dream.” Now, however, she has become serious and superior, and the ordinary young man who flirts and dances and plays tennis is as nought to her. Men interest her, she says, intellectually, and only according to the measure of their mental powers or artistic sensibilities does she value their companionship. Let no man dare to talk frivolously to her; she would resent it as an insult to her understanding. If he attempted to pay conventional compliments, he would receive such a snub as should serve him for a lifetime, and put a check on the honeyed side of his tongue for evermore. But Miss Strongith’will is not a stone, she is full of humanity, full of sympathy for those who suffer and those who struggle for existence or strive to realise lofty aspirations. She is only hard upon women who lower their natures for the love of men, who submit to martyrdom, or turn sour because they have been disappointed in love. She contends that love is not, as Byron has it, “woman’s whole existence,” but that, as the poet says with regard to man, it is of her life “a thing apart”—a beautiful thing that adorns her life and makes it more lovely, but not absolutely necessary as an active influence. But it could hardly be that a woman who thinks and theorises about love has never felt its magic spell, that she has never known the beautiful joy of loving and of being loved. Miss Strongith’will’s individualism is opposed to any outward show of emotion, and an ordinary acquaintance, even a friend, would never quite penetrate to her heart’s secrets. She never talks of her love affair—her great love affair, I mean, which changed the girl to woman, and made her herself. But I know something of what it was to her, what she suffered with the disappointment.