the St. George’s Gazette—­Cardiff had sent them to her—­and she selected this journal from the damp lot that hung, over the newsboy’s arm, on the chance of a fresh one.  The doors were locked and the train hurried on.  Elfrida ate two of her Banbury cakes with the malediction that only this British confection can inspire, and bestowed the rest upon a small boy who eyed her enviously over the back of an adjoining seat She and the small boy and his mother had the carriage to themselves.

There was nothing from the unusual Australian contributor in this number of the St. George’s, and Elfrida turned its pages with the bored feeling of knowing what else she might expect.  “Parliamentary Debates,” of course, and the news of London, five lines from America announcing the burning of a New York hotel with hideous loss of life, an article on the situation in Persia, and one on the cultivation of artichokes, “Money,” “The Seer of Hawarden,” the foreign markets—­book reviews.  Elfrida thought also that she knew what she might expect here, and that it would be nothing very absorbing.  Still, with a sense of tasting criticism in advance, she let her eye travel over the column or two the paper devoted to three or four books of the week.  A moment later Janet Cardiff’s name in the second paragraph had sprung at her throat, it seemed to Elfrida, and choked her.

She could not see—­she could not see!  The print was so bad, the light was infernal, the carriage jolted so.  She got up and held the paper nearer to the lamp in the roof, staying herself against the end of a seat.  As she read she grew paler, and the paper shook in her hand.  “One of the valuable books of the year,” “showing grasp of character and keen dramatic instinct,” “a distinctly original vein,” “too slender a plot for perfect symmetry, but a treatment of situation at once nervous and strong,” were some of the commonplaces that said themselves over and again in her mind as she sank back into her place by the window with the paper lying across her lap.

Her heart beat furiously, her head was in a whirl; she stared hard, for calmness, into the swift-passing night outside.  Presently she recognized herself to be angry with an intense still jealous anger that seemed to rise and consume her in every part of her being.  A success—­of course it would be a success if Janet wrote it—­she was not artistic enough to fail.  Ah, should Janet’s friend go so far as to say that?  She didn’t know—­she would think afterward; but Janet was of those who succeed, and there were more ways than one of deserving success.  Janet was a compromise; she belonged really to the British public and the class of Academy studies from the nude which were always draped, just a little.  Elfrida found a bitter satisfaction in this simile, and elaborated it.  The book would be one to be commended for jeunes filles, and her lips turned down mockingly in the shadow.  She fancied some well-meaning