kind in her, and the thinking out of the predestined male would have
been as agreeable a task as falls to the lot of a man of letters. And
being a young man he would begin by considering the long series of
poets, painters and musicians, he had read of in Balzac's novels, but as
none of these would be within the harmony of Violet's perverse humour,
he would turn to life, and presently a vague shaggy shape would emerge
from the back of his mind, but it would refuse to condense into any
recognizable face; which is as well, perhaps, else I might be tempted to
pick up this forgotten flower, though I am fain to write no more long
stories.

But though we regret that the author of _Muslin_ did not gather this
Violet for his literary buttonhole, let no one suggest that the old man
should return to his Springtime to do what the young man left undone.
Our gathering-time is over, and we are henceforth prefacers. _The Brook
Cherith_ is our last. Some may hear this decision with sorrow, but we
have written eighteen books, which is at least ten too many, and none
shall persuade us to pick up the burden of another long story. We swear
it and close our ears to our admirers, and to escape them we plunge into
consideration of Violet's soul and her aptitudes, saying, and saying
well, that if polygamy thrives with Mohammedanism in the East, polyandry
has settled down in the West with Christianity, and that since Nora
slammed the door the practice of acquiring a share in a woman's life,
rather than insisting on the whole of it, has caught such firm root in
our civilization that it is no exaggeration to say that every married
woman to-day will admit she could manage two men better than her husband
could manage two wives. If we inquire still further, we submit, and
confidently, that every woman--saint or harlot, it matters not
which--would confess she would prefer to live with two men rather than
share her husband with another woman. All women are of one mind on this