ked at. It seemed to indicate a threat; but
for the moment it did not disturb her so much as the review of her moral
prostration. She wrote some lines to her lawyers, quoting one of
Mr. Warwick's sentences. That done, his letter was dismissed. Her
intolerable languor became alternately a defeating drowsiness and a
fever. She succeeded 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 th