"
"Then you are not content, after all, to be merely a poem?" I said,
maliciously. "You would like to do as well as to be?"
She laughed. Then, after a little, she said earnestly: "Do you know, I
always feel as if I _could_ do something--teach something--or help
others in a small way with some work of importance. I never believe I
was born just to live and die. But I have a queer feeling about it. I
am sure I shall be made to go down into some great depth of sin and
misery myself, in order to learn what it is I have to teach."
She loved music, and painting, and poetry, and science, and none of her
loves were barren. She embraced them each in turn with an ardour that
resulted in the production of an offspring--a song, a picture, a poem,
or book on some most serious subject, and all worthy of note. But she
was inconstant, and these children of her thought or fancy were
generally isolated efforts that marked the culminating point of her
devotion, and lessened her interest if they did not exhaust her
strength.
Perhaps, though, I wrong her when I call her inconstant. It seems to me
now that each new interest was a step by which she mounted upwards,
learning to sympathise practically and perfectly with all men in their
work as she passed them on her way to find her own.
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