uselessness of his pupil Grace Chorister, say, with the fine efficience of Miss Wing, he himself could not have said. But at least he knew that Mary Wing had long embodied the best of the whole Movement for him. He had held her up, in season and out, as a perfect example of the New Woman at her best. And Mary Wing was that, he declared it now; the real thing, as different as possible from the hollow shams of the Redmantle Club. Of course—of course—she had a right, just the same right that a man had, to put away her mother, her family and friends, and follow away the star of her work. But ... if only she showed a little more appreciation of values apart from My Career; if only you could imagine Mary sometimes speaking of Being a Daughter and Being a Sister.

Yes; those were the words that rose naturally in his mind. Beyond doubt, Mary Wing's cousin from the backwoods had given a push to Charles Garrott's thought; he would have been the first to admit that. Not merely had Miss Angela happened to body forth, in the most pleasing, unconscious way, that very type which all Redmantlers so derided; but further, she had artlessly used a phrase which, to his authoritative mind, had helped to scientize her case at a bound. For of course the most scientific modern demand as to Miss Angela's class came simply down to this, that all Temporary Spinsters should have some regular business to occupy their hands and heads. Very well, then, laughed this little girl: What about the Business of Making Homes?

The phrase, connoting so much more than mere "keeping house," was worthy of a writer. And when had this other doctrine grown so strong and sure, that the Business of Making a Career, of Developing My Ego, was necessarily the biggest business in the world?

In the silence of the large dim Studio, the young man stood stroking the bridge of his nose, somewhat worriedly. It was a well-cut bridge, and held three brown freckles.

It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he himself was helping to spread the egoistic doctrine referred to. He remembered his novel, in short: his Old Novel, as he already called it, albeit it was his only one, and he and Judge Blenso had completed it but two weeks ago, to a day. This novel, in manuscript, was now in the hands of the great house of Willcox Brothers Company, whom Charles, after due thought, had selected as his publishers. Willcox's offer, and the contract, might come by any mail now.

To the writing, and infinite rewriting, of this first work had gone the scant leisure of more than four years. Its title-page read: 

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