Nobody else even looked at it.
People said to themselves, "This book seems to be a book with a
teaching not thoroughly banal, like the novels-with-a-purpose after
which we flock; so we'll give it a wide berth."
And they shunned it accordingly.
That was the end of Herminia Barton's literary aspirations. She
had given the people of her best, and the people rejected it. Now
she gave them of her most mediocre; the nearest to their own level
of thought and feeling to which her hand could reduce itself. And
the people accepted it. The rest of her life was hack-work; by
that, she could at least earn a living for Dolores. Her "Antigone,
for the Use of Ladies' Schools" still holds its own at Girton and
Somerville.
XIV.
I do not propose to dwell at any length upon the next ten or twelve
years of Herminia Barton's life. An episode or two must suffice;
and those few told briefly.
She saw nothing of her family. Relations had long been strained
between them; now they were ruptured. To the rest of the Bartons,
she was even as one dead; the sister and daughter's name was never
pronounced among them.
Pages:
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168