The publisher smiled.  “Under different circumstances it might have done so,” he replied, “but we have seen Miss Armitage several times—­she is quite a young girl, not at all of the ‘literary’ type, though she is very careful and accurate in her secretarial work—­I mean as regards business letters and attention to detail.  But at her age she could not have had the scholarship to produce such a book.  The author shows a close familiarity with sixteenth-century literature such as could only be gained by a student of the style of that period,—­Miss Armitage has nothing of the ’book-worm’ about her—­she is quite a simple young person—­more like a bright school-girl than anything else—­”

“Where does she live?” asked Harrington, abruptly.

The publisher looked up the address and gave it.

“There it is,” he said; “if you want to write to the author she will forward any letters to him.”

Harrington stared at the pencilled direction for a moment in silence.  He remembered it—­of course he remembered it!—­it was the very address given to the driver of the taxi-cab in which the girl with whom he had travelled to London more than a year ago had gone, as it seemed, out of his sight.  Every little incident connected with her came freshly back to his mind—­how she had spoken of the books she loved in “old French” and “Elizabethan English”—­and how she had said she knew the way to earn her own living.  If this was the way—­if she was indeed the author of the book which had stirred and wakened the drowsing soul of the age, then she had not ventured in vain!

Aloud he said: 

“It seems to be another case of the ‘Author of Waverley’ and the ‘Great Unknown’!  I suppose you’ll take anything else you can get by the same hand?”

“Rather!” And the publisher nodded emphatically—­“We have already secured a second work.”

“Through Miss Armitage?”

“Yes.  Through Miss Armitage.”

Harrington laughed.

“I believe you’re all blinder than bats!” he said—­“Why on earth you should think that because a woman looks like a school-girl she cannot write a clever book if gifted that way, is a condition of non-intelligence I fail to fathom!  You speak of this author as a ‘he.’  Do you think only a male creature can produce a work of genius?  Look at the twaddle men turn out every day in the form of novels alone!  Many of them are worse than the worst weak fiction by women.  I tell you I’ve lived long enough to know that a woman’s brain can beat a man’s if she cares to test it, so long as she does not fall in love.  When once that disaster happens it’s all over with her!  It’s the one drawback to a woman’s career; if she would only keep clear of love and self-sacrifice she’d do wonders!  Men never allow love to interfere with so much as their own smoke —­very few among them would sacrifice a good cigar for a woman!  As for this girl, Miss Armitage, I’ll pluck out the heart of her mystery for you!  I suppose you won’t pay any less for good work if it turns out to be by a ‘she’ instead of a ’he’?”