unpretentious--because its stuff was such pure
gold. How that gold would shine through the cunningly chosen medium of
her simple, unassuming phrases! She had seen it shining so through all
the time that she had resisted it. But now--though she gave herself
unreservedly to the cherished idea, though she turned over and over,
with a passionate preoccupation, the little golden nugget of it--the
simple, delicate phrases that were to reveal, to exploit it, did not
appear.

She had always written with a singular ease, and it seemed strange to
sit before her tempting pages and write not a word. But on the first
morning, she felt no alarm. After all, it was but natural that she
should have to spend some time in coaxing it out to the light--that
talent of hers so long confined. It was but natural that it should not
have courage to soar and sing at once. But on the second day her paper
was as empty as before; it lay upon her table like a useless snare for
some wild and lovely bird that no longer had vitality enough to flutter
within reach of it.

And now, sitting at her writing-table in vain for several days, fear
seized upon Sheila, fear that she would not name or analyze.

Well, as one grew older, one often wrote differently, with more
difficulty. She had heard that, she reflected eagerly. She had heard
that deliberate, intellectual effort had often to succeed the flushed,
panting rush of youthful inspiration. This was probably the case with
her now; of course it was, indeed. She must undertake the effort; she
must accept and master a new method. Then all would be right with her.

And so she went about deliberately translating the gold of her idea
into those dreamed-of words which were so fitly to interpret it. She
went about it with an energy, a will to accomplish the feat, that
should have been sufficient to achieve miracles. If there had been,
hitherto, a strain of weakness in her, she was now all strength. And
by that sheer strength--of purpose, of determination--she sought to
realize her dream of perfection.

Now the white sheets on her table were no longer barren. Slow, painful
writing covered them. She wrote and discarded, and wrote again. Day
after day, she sat there at her table, engaged, as she came at last to
perceive, in her final, her ultimate tragedy.

For when the thing that she had visioned as a little golden masterpiece
was finished, she knew it for what it was. There was no felicity o