life of the mummers gives an old-world, adventurous air to the book,
reminding you of _The Golden Ass_--a book I read last year, and found
in it so many remembrances of myself that I fell to thinking it was a book
I might have written had I lived two thousand years ago. Who can say he has
not lived before, and is it not as important to believe we lived herebefore
as it is to believe we are going to live hereafter? If I had lived
herebefore, Jupiter knows what I should have written, but it would not have
been _Esther Waters_: more likely a book like _A Mummer's
Wife_--a band of jugglers and acrobats travelling from town to town. As
I write these lines an antique story rises up in my mind, a recollection of
one of my lost works or an instantaneous reading of Apuleius into _A
Mummers Wife_--which?

G.M.




A MUMMER'S WIFE


I


In default of a screen, a gown and a red petticoat had been thrown over a
clothes-horse, and these shaded the glare of the lamp from the eyes of the
sick man. In the pale obscurity of the room, his bearded cheeks could be
seen buried in a heap of tossed pillows. By his bedside sat a young woman.
As she dozed, her face drooped until her features were hidden, and the
lamp-light made the curious curves of a beautiful ear look like a piece of