it into Larkins and White’s and I saw Mr. Larkins in his office and he was very kind and polite, although I think now he was laughing a little to himself at the idea of my writing a book, but he said to leave the MSS. and he would let me hear.  And I left it and, oh, Margaret, I heard within a week, and he said such lovely things about it.  You know I always go to the post-office, so there was no chance of anybody’s finding it out that way.  And then the proof began to come and I was at my wits’ end to conceal that, but I did.  And then the book was published, and, Margaret, you know the rest.  Nobody dreams who wrote it, and I have had a statement and oh, my dear, next November I am to have a check.” (Annie leaned over and whispered in Margaret’s ear.) “Only think,” she said with a burst of rapture.

Margaret was quite pale.  She sat looking straight before her with a strange expression.  She was tasting in the very depths of her soul a bitterness which was more biting than any bitter herb which ever grew on earth.  It was a bitterness, which, thank God, is unknown to many; the bitterness of the envy of an incapable, but self-seeking nature, of one with the burning ambition of genius but destitute of the divine fire.  To such come unholy torture, which is unspeakable at the knowledge of another’s success.  Margaret Edes was inwardly writhing.  To think that Annie Eustace, little Annie Eustace, who had worshipped at her own shrine, whom she had regarded with a lazy, scarcely concealed contempt, for her incredible lack of wordly knowledge, her provincialism, her ill-fitting attire, should have achieved a triumph which she herself could never achieve.  A cold hatred of the girl swept over the woman.  She forced her lips into a smile, but her eyes were cruel.

“How very interesting, my dear,” she said.

Poor Annie started.  She was acute, for all her innocent trust in another’s goodness, and the tone of her friend’s voice, the look in her eyes chilled her.  And yet she did not know what they signified.  She went on begging for sympathy and rejoicing with her joy as a child might beg for a sweet.  “Isn’t it perfectly lovely, Margaret dear?” she said.

“It is most interesting, my dear child,” replied Margaret.

Annie went on eagerly with the details of her triumph, the book sales which increased every week, the revises, the letters from her publishers, and Margaret listened smiling in spite of her torture, but she never said more than “How interesting.”

At last Annie went home and could not help feeling disappointed, although she could not fathom the significance of Margaret’s reception of her astonishing news.  Annie only worried because she feared lest her happiness had not cheered her friend as much as she had anticipated.