confident that a frown or a hard word will end the affair, should carry
into business (be it never so grave) the laxities so long permitted her in
the home?

I would not charge the professional woman, as I know her, with any
consistent lack of seriousness. On the contrary, she is in the main
exquisitely serious. No one will deny that the average girl, when she
adopts a profession, exhibits a seriousness, an energy, and a
perseverance, of which the average man is apparently incapable. (It is
strange that the less her aptitude, the more dogged her industry.) The
seriousness of some women in Fleet Street and at the Slade School must be
reckoned among the sights of London. It seems almost impossible that this
priceless intensity of purpose should co-exist in the same individual with
that annoying irresponsibility which I have endeavoured to account for.
Yet such is the fact. Scores of instances of it might be furnished; let
one, however, suffice. Once there was a woman-journalist in the North of
England who wrote to a London paper for permission to act as its special
correspondent during the visit of some royal personages to her town. The
editor of the paper, knowing her for an industrious and conscientious
worker and a good descriptive writer, gave the necessary authority, with
explicit information as to the last moment for receiving copy. The moment
came, but not the copy; and the editor, for the time being a raging
misogynist (for he had in the meanwhile publicly announced his intention
to print a special report), went to press without it. The next day, no
explanation having arrived, he dispatched to his special correspondent a
particularly scathing and scornful letter. Then came the excuse. It was
long, but the root of it amounted to exactly this: "I was so knocked up
and had such a headache after the ceremonies were over, that I really did
not feel equal to the exertion of writing. _I thought it would not
matter._" Comment would be inartistic. The curious thing is that the