of starvation or prostitution. He had shackled her wrists behind her back
and hobbled her feet and bequeathed her to wolves. That was what he had
done, and what many and many such fathers had done, and still do, to their
idolised daughters.

"Herein was the root of Lilian's awful burning resentment against the
whole world, and of a fierce and terrible determination by fair means or
foul to make the world pay. Her soul was a horrid furnace, and if by
chance Lionel Share leaned out from the gold bar of heaven and noticed it,
the sight must have turned his thoughts towards hell for a pleasant
change. She was saved from disaster, from martyrdom, from ignominy, from
the unnameable, by the merest fluke. The nurse who tended Lionel Share's
last hours was named Grig. This nurse had cousins in the typewriting
business. She had also a kind heart a practical mind, and a persuasive
manner with cousins."

Lilian in the office late at night has been engaged in conversation by her
employer, Mr. Grig, and Mr. Grig has finally come to the point.

"'You know you've no business in a place like this, a girl like you.
You're much too highly strung for one thing. You aren't like Miss Jackson,
for instance. You're simply wasting yourself here. Of course you're
terribly independent, but you do try to please. I don't mean try to please
merely in your work. You try to please. It's an instinct with you. Now in
typing you'd never beat Miss Jackson. Miss Jackson's only alive, really,
when she's typing. She types with her whole soul. You type well--I
hear--but that's only because you're clever all round. You'd do anything
well. You'd milk cows just as well as you'd type. But your business is
marriage, and a good marriage! You're beautiful, and, as I say, you have
an instinct to please. That's the important thing. You'd make a success of
marriage because of that and because you're adaptable and quick at picking
up. Most women when they're married forget that their job is to adapt
themselves and to please. That's their job. They expect to be kowtowed to
and spoilt and humoured and to be free to spend money without having to
earn it, and to do nothing in return except just exist--and perhaps manage
a household, pretty badly. They seem to forget that there are two sides to
a bargain. It's dashed hard work, pleasing is, sometimes. I know that. But
it isn't so hard as earning money, believe me! Now you wouldn't be like
the majority of women. You'd keep