Darkness had filled the cold spring garden, and the letter in her hand was only a pale shape like a great moth. But she had the words by heart now.
'Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be less eager for celebrity...'
She felt a little faint, and reckoned this must be the simple result of there being no blood at her heart, because all her blood, for an hour or more, had been in her burning, pulsing cheeks, in a pathological blush of mortification.