osity roused in me, by a woman
practising any of the fine arts--except the art of writing. That she
should write a few little poems or pensees, or some impressions of a
trip in a dahabieh as far as (say) Biskra, or even a short story or
two, seems to me not wholly amiss, even though she do such things for
publication. But that she should be an habitual, professional author,
with a passion for her art, and a fountain-pen and an agent, and sums
down in advance of royalties on sales in Canada and Australia, and a
profound knowledge of human character, and an essentially sane outlook,
is somehow incongruous with my notions--my mistaken notions, if you
will--of what she ought to be.

'Has a profound knowledge of human character, and an essentially sane
outlook' said one of the critics quoted at the end of the book that I
had chosen. The wind and the rain in the chimney had not abated, but
the fire was bearing up bravely. So would I. I would read cheerfully and
without prejudice. I poked the fire and, pushing my chair slightly back,
lest the heat should warp the book's covers, began Chapter I. A
woman sat writing in a summer-house at the end of a small garden
that overlooked a great valley in Surrey. The description of her was
calculated to make her very admirable--a thorough woman, not strictly
beautiful, but likely to be thought beautiful by those who knew her
well; not dressed as though she gave much heed to her clothes, but
dressed in a fashion that exactly harmonised with her special type. Her
pen 'travelled' rapidly across the foolscap, and while it did so she was
described in more and more detail. But at length she came to a 'knotty
point' in what she was writing. She paused, she pushed back the hair
from her temples, she looked forth at the valley; and now the landscape
was described, but not at all exhaustively, it, for the writer soon
overcame her difficulty, and her pen travelled faster than ever, till
suddenly there was a cry of 'Mammy!' and in rushed a seven-year-old
child, in conjunction with whom she was more than ever admirable; after
which the narrative skipped back across eight years, and the woman
became a girl, giving as yet no token of future eminence in literature
but--I had an impulse which I obeyed almost before I was, conscious of
it.

Nobody could have been more surprised than I was at what I had
done--done so neatly, so quietly and gently. The book stood closed,
upright, with its back to me, just