ded in the effort to smother the absolute cause: it was not
suffered to show a front; at the cost of her knowledge of a practised
self-deception. 'I wonder whether the world is as bad as a certain class
of writers tell us!' she sighed in weariness, and mused on their
soundings and probings of poor humanity, which the world accepts for the
very bottom truth if their dredge brings up sheer refuse of the
abominable. The world imagines those to be at our nature's depths who are
impudent enough to expose its muddy shallows. She was in the mood for
such a kind of writing: she could have started on it at once but that the
theme was wanting; and it may count on popularity, a great repute for
penetration. It is true of its kind, though the dredging of nature is the
miry form of art. When it flourishes we may be assured we have been
overenamelling the higher forms. She felt, and shuddered to feel, that
she could draw from dark stores. Hitherto in her works it had been a
triumph of the good. They revealed a gaping deficiency of the subtle
insight she now possessed. 'Exhibit humanity as it is, wallowing,
sensual, wicked, behind the mask,' a voice called to her; she was allured
by the contemplation of the wide-mouthed old dragon Ego, whose portrait,
decently painted, establishes an instant touch of exchange between author
and public, the latter detected and confessing. Next to the pantomime of
Humour and Pathos, a cynical surgical knife at the human bosom seems the
surest talisman for this agreeable exchange; and she could cut. She gave
herself a taste of her powers. She cut at herself mercilessly, and had to
bandage the wound in a hurry to keep in life.

Metaphors were her refuge. Metaphorically she could allow her mind to
distinguish the struggle she was undergoing, sinking under it. The
banished of Eden had to put on metaphors, and the common use of them has
helped largely to civilize us. The sluggish in intellect detest them, but
our civilization is not much indebted to that major faction. Especially
are they needed by the pedestalled woman in her conflict with the
natural. Diana saw herself through the haze she conjured up. 'Am I worse
than other women?' was a piercing twithought. Worse, would be hideous
isolation. The not worse, abased her sex. She could afford to say that
the world was bad: not that women were.

Sinking deeper, an anguish of humiliation smote her to a sense of
drowning. For what of the poetic ecstasy on her S