accumulations, acquisitions--whatever you choose to call them--have
disappeared. We are not to the superficial eye the spinster-
philanthropist, the bride to be, the wife of a year; we are the same
old Salemina, Francesca and Penelope. It is so dramatic that my
husband should be called to America; as a woman I miss him and need
him; as a character I am much better single. I don't suppose
publishers like married heroines any more than managers like married
leading ladies. Then how entirely proper it is that Ronald
Macdonald cannot leave his new parish in the Highlands. The one, my
husband, belongs to the first volume; Francesca's lover to the
second; and good gracious, Salemina, don't you see the inference?"

"I may be dull," she replied, "but I confess I do not."

"We are three?"

"Who is three?"

"That is not good English, but I repeat with different emphasis WE
are three. I fell in love in England, Francesca fell in love in
Scotland-" And here I paused, watching the blush mount rosily to
Salemina's grey hair; pink is very becoming to grey, and that, we
always say, accounts more satisfactorily for Salemina's frequent
blushes than her modesty, which is about of the usual sort.

"Your argument is interesting, and even ingenious," she replied,
"but I fail to see my responsibility. If you persist in thinking of
me as a character in fiction, I shall rebel. I am not the stuff of
which heroines are made; besides, I would never appear in anything
so cheap and obvious as a series, and the three-volume novel is as