I have been asked whether an unmarried woman is happier with a profession or without one. Without hesitation of course I answer - 'Yes, with a profession,' especially if it is the outcome of any particular talent. The real cause of the happiness which ensues is that it gives her the same excuse and the same ease to her conscience for selfishness as a man has. It always works round to the same thing-how much can a woman evade her home duties in order to be able to indulge in any intellectual occupation which takes up her mind, to the detriment of the ordinary, petty drudgeries such as practically absorb most women's lives ? The great difficulty for a woman who is head of a house, or even for a daughter who helps much in the management of a house, allowing herself the pleasure of any intellectual employment-be it writing, or art, or music, or even reading conducted as a study-is that the very meaning of work is absorption. Women are by their natures impressionable and too apt to become engrossed in anything they are doing, to the neglect of the claims of others. It is not exactly the time that it takes from the husband and children, but the thoughts of a woman are not quickly brought back to the level of her ceaseless duties. I heard once of the wife of an Ambassador, who was devoted to drawing, having arranged for a dinner for royalties, etc, planning the details with her servants in her usual careful way. The day arrived, she had time on her hands, the weather was lovely; she took her sketching things and went out. She became so absorbed in her drawing and the beauty of the evening that the royal guests, the husband, and the dinner became absolutely effaced from the tablet of her memory. She arrived home at half-past nine, to find her husband agonised, her guests expectant and a little angry, all believing she must have come to some injury. This little anecdote exactly illustrates what I mean, and describes the struggle that goes on, more or less, in many women's lives. Of course the same thing occurs, to a great degree, with busy men, whose brains are often as much occupied, to the exclusion of other things, in the work that interests them. But since, as a rule, they have more power of arranging their lives to suit their tastes, their absorption affects less the happiness or convenience of others, and they often have a practical wife who helps them out of their difficulties. No doubt there are instances of both men and women who have the power of combining, in the highest sense, both work and play. A pathetic little touch in a woman's biography is of how Mrs. Browning wrote 'Aurora Leigh'as an invalid in Paris. She was constantly interrupted by friends and visitors, and used quietly to tuck the little bits of paper under the pillow of her sofa, to resume her imaginative work when again alone. The complications of life were lessened for her by the fact that she inhabited a sick-room. I think the women who will do most for the cause of their sex in the future are those who cease to fight for an equality with men, which is practically an impossibility, and will strive, from their youth up, to keep a just balance between duty, pleasure, and intellectual pursuits; sometimes asking the help of others to decide when the two last must give way to the first. I am terribly tempted to scratch out this last sentence-it sounds so odiously priggish; and yet, of course, we all know there is a good deal of truth in it.

If a woman has been ever so successful in a profession, it is my experience that she gives it up after marriage. Every man always says, at the time of engagement, that he would not for the world interfere with her work; but it always ends in the work being given up, if the house is to be properly kept. Imagine, if there were sickness or any other kind of domestic disaster in the house, the man would never dream of giving up his work, whatever it might be. But think of a woman, head of any such household, sitting down under the circumstances to write a poem, or to paint a picture, or going out to her modelling studio? The woman's profession must go to the wall, unless it is under the very exceptional circumstances when the woman is the bread-winner, or even partially so, and when disaster may increase the necessity for her earnings.

Perhaps many Englishwomen would deny what I really believe to be the truth-namely, that passion is the great moving power of life, the root of all that is highest and noblest in us, the developer of all that is artistic, intellectual, affectionate, and even religious in ourselves. Some people may accuse me of inconsistency in saying this. Of that I should be proud, for can anything ever approach the inconsistency of life-especially, perhaps, the life of women? Women-Englishwomen, at all events-imagine that there is but one danger in having strong feeling, and that, if that is sufficiently suppressed in the direction which is natural and ordinary, it ceases to cause any alarm at all. I do not agree with this. It is a platitude to talk of the dual nature which we all have within us. The contrast between these two natures is much more marked, and causes a fiercer struggle, in passionate natures than in cold ones.

Women as well as men have a twin within them, often concealed, which represents all that is strongest and most lovable in their natures. They generally have something which they like doing better than anything else in the world, and which for that reason is very apt to interfere with their duty, however innocent or even meritorious it may be in itself, whether it takes the form of writing, art, politics, philanthropy, or the practice of religion. If a married woman throws all this power, so often described as suppressed steam, into any employment that makes her daily duties tiresome and hateful to her, she is yielding to a form of self-indulgence which more or less feeds her vanity and robs her home and her children of that which is the most vivifying portion of herself and of the one most likely to call forth from them both admiration and esteem.