For a long time she hoped against hope that he was really worthy of the love she gave him, that he would do something to make the world respect him; but he had encouraged his nature to yearn for an ideal love, which should mean complete mutual self-surrender, the making of two lives one. The idea of female individualism he admitted was just, but it did not suit him, the substitution of intellectual sympathy and serene sentiment for that passionate love which must absorb every function of soul and body, left his life still unfulfilled. Literary achievement and fame could not fill it, only woman’s love could do that, only the love that maintains no distinct individuality, the love that gives and takes all. Aspasia would have suited him, as Walter Savage Landor draws her. “We cannot love without imitating,” she says, “and we are as proud in the loss of our originality as of our freedom.” But this was not Miss Strongith’will’s way of loving; to lose any measure of one’s individuality even in love was, in her eyes, to be degraded. Yet she loved deeply in her way, and when her impressionable, idealist lover, without any thought of inconstancy, took his love to another, whose nature he deemed more in sympathy with his own, Miss Strongith’will suffered a bitter blow and a deep wound. She uttered no complaint, however, and few ever knew that she had been in love, much less that she had found it disappointing. But the experience seemed to open out her life, she saw clearer, her knowledge of human motives and feelings was widened, and she felt more than ever that woman can live individually and independently. She did not, however, perceive that she had met her disappointment through not attempting to weld her own individuality with that of the man she had loved without understanding. But after that she believed implicitly in herself, and determined to follow her own pursuits, to live as independently as if she were a man, and, thrown on her own resources, compelled to earn her own living, a duty she considers every woman owes to herself. What would be Miss Strongith’will’s views on individualism were she a happy wife and the mother of a large family, whether she would still consider that a woman has the right to live exclusively according to her own tastes and inclinations, I cannot tell; I think she would find it rather difficult in practice. As it is, however, Miss Strongith’will is happily situated, for she is the beloved of her immediate family, among whom she is regarded as a superior being who ought to have her own way in everything.