Elfrida looked at it affectionately, her eyes caressed the lines as she read them.

"I find here true things and clever things," she went on; "Yes, and original, _quite_ original things.

That about Balzac has never been said before--I assure you, Buddha, it has never been said before! Yet the editor of the _Athenian_ returns it to me in two days with a printed form of thanks--exactly the same printed form of thanks with which he would return a poem by Arabella Jones! Is the editor of the _Athenian_ a dolt, Buddha?
The _Decade_ typewrites his regrets--that's better--but the _Bystander_ says nothing at all but 'Declined with thanks' inside the flap of the envelope." The girl stared absently into the candle.

She was not in reality greatly discouraged by these refusals: she knew that they were to be expected: indeed, they formed part of the picturesqueness of the situation in which she saw herself, alone in London, making her own fight for life as she found it worth living, by herself, for herself, in herself.

It had gone on for six weeks; she thought she knew all its bitterness, and she saw nowhere the faintest gleam of coming success; yet the idea of giving it up did not even occur to her.