If it had not been for these things it is very certain that Poppy, with all her resolution and purpose, must have broken down from overwork and the strain of seeing the man she loved turn his eyes from her perpetually. For there were desperate hours when she obliged herself to face the fact that Evelyn Carson gave no sign of any feeling for her but a certain polite curiosity. In the black, despairing days that never fail to come to highly-strung, temperamental people, she bitterly derided herself, her work, her cause, asking what it was all for?
To win freedom from Luce Abinger and cast herself into the arms of Eve Carson? But were his arms open to her? Plainly not. Plainly here was another of the "little songs they sing in hell"—of the woman who loves, but is beloved not by the beloved.
Oh! she had her black and desperate days—
"And the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night."
But afterwards Hope played for her on the one brave string—and she took up her pen and worked on.
On a stormy, sullen day towards the end of April she wrote the concluding words of the two things she had been working on at the same time—a play and a novel. They contained the best work she had ever done, for though they were begun for the love of a man, they were gone forward with, for the love of her craft, and, as all good craftsmen know, it is only in such spirit that the best work is achieved. All that remained to do was to go over and through the manuscripts once more, when they had been typed, to polish here and re-phrase there; and just to linger over all for a day in sheer delight and surprise. She was not peculiar among writers, in that, apart from the plan and construction of a thing, she never remembered from day to day what she had written, and always felt the greatest surprise and freshness in re-reading passages which had sped from her mind to paper in inspired moments, and which, if not written at those moments, would have been lost for ever.
Schopenhauer was not the only person in the world to discover that a beautiful thought is like a beautiful woman. If you want to keep the one always you must tie her to you by marriage, if the other, you must tie it to you with pen and paper or it will leave you and never return.
On that morning when she made her finished work into two tall piles of exercise-books before her on her table, the measure of content was hers that is felt by even the heaviest-hearted when they look upon good work done.
She laid her head on the books and tears fell softly down, and her heart sang a little song that was pure thankfulness and praise for the goodness of God.
And while she sat, there came a little tap at the door.