found to have redeeming power. It is one of the lies of the cynic that
love must needs burn itself out somewhere about the forties. Thousands
of people have found at forty that the best was yet to be. For the fact
is that all through the afternoon of life and even when the shadows
lengthen towards the end love will still send beams of beauty and
romance into daily life, and remaining still passionate will put golden
content into the passing hours.

It is life stories of this sort which alone reveal the meaning and
purpose of God in making the sex interest so almighty and central in
life. We do not understand love till we have thus looked on towards
the end. When it is allowed to run its true course it does in this way
redeem life.

If I am told that I have drawn a hopelessly idealized picture of
married love, I can only reply by a blunt denial. Twenty-five years of
intimate contact with ordinary people have taught me these things. The
kind of life I have pictured is going on in uncounted small and unknown
homes all over the country. It is going on with commonplace people who
are neither very interesting nor very clever, but who are wise enough
to be simple and human. The real wonder of love is just that it can
lift two commonplace people into a life that is not commonplace. And
that is just how most of us get our chance in life. The people who are
going through these experiences are for the most part quiet people. We
do not hear about them. They do not have novels written about them, and
they supply no copy for the society newspapers. It is the other people
who advertise their woes. It is the unhappily married who make a noise.
Only the very greatest novelists can make a good novel out of the story
of a successful marriage. But apparently almost anyone can produce
stories that people will read if only he or she puts in enough highly