the greater part of her books. To their shame be it said, a great many people believed him; and not till he was dead, and the woman went on writing her books as before, did they even begin to see the wrong they had done her. They would not have dared to calumniate the false boaster as they calumniated the innocent hard worker. The boaster was a man,—the worker was a woman;—therefore the dishonour of passing off literary work not one's own, must, so they imagined, naturally belong to Accursëd Eve,—not to Coward Adam! Of their humiliation when the real truth was known, history sayeth nothing.
Yet with all the weight of her curse more or less upon her, and with all her sorrows, shattered ideals, wrecked hopes, and lost loves, Accursëd Eve is still the most beautiful, the most perfect figure in creation. Her failings, her vanities, her weaknesses, her sins, arise in the first place from love—even if afterwards, through Coward Adam's ready encouragement, they degenerate into vice and animalism. Her first impulse in earliest youth is a desire to please Adam,—the same impulse precisely which led her to offer him the forbidden apple in the first days of their mutual acquaintance. She wishes to charm him,—to win his heart,—to endear herself to him in a thousand tender ways,—to wind herself irretrievably round his life. If she succeeds in this aim, she is invariably happy and virtuous. But if she is made to feel that she cannot hold him on whom her thoughts are centred,—if his professed love for her only proves weak and false when put to trial,—if he finds it easy to forget both sentiment
