human lives. These two--with what immortal chucklings one may facilely
imagine--have left the weakling thus enthroned, free to direct the heavy
outcome, free to choose, and free to evoke much happiness or age-long
weeping, but with no intermediate course unbarred. _Now prove thyself_!
saith Destiny; and Chance appends: _Now prove thyself to be at bottom a
god or else a beast, and now eternally abide that choice. And now_ (O
crowning irony!) _we may not tell thee clearly by which choice thou
mayst prove either_.

In this little book about the women who intermarried, not very enviably,
with an unhuman race (a race predestinate to the red ending which I have
chronicled elsewhere, in _The Red Cuckold_), it is of ten such moments
that I treat.

You alone, I think, of all persons living, have learned, as you have
settled by so many instances, to rise above mortality in such a testing,
and unfailingly to merit by your conduct the plaudits and the adoration
of our otherwise dissentient world. You have often spoken in the stead
of Destiny, with nations to abide your verdict; and in so doing have
both graced and hallowed your high vicarship. If I forbear to speak of
this at greater length, it is because I dare not couple your well-known
perfection with any imperfect encomium. Upon no plea, however, can any
one forbear to acknowledge that he who seeks to write of noble ladies
must necessarily implore at outset the patronage of her who is the light
and mainstay of our age.

_Therefore to you, madame--most excellent and noble lady, to whom I love
to owe both loyalty and love--I dedicate this little book._