"Do not torture yourself, my child, with jealous fears of the fair
Italian. Her lot and Alain de Rochebriant's can never unite; and
whatever you may think of their whispered converse, Alain's heart at this
moment is too filled with anxious troubles to leave one spot in it
accessible even to a frivolous gallantry. It is for us to remove these
troubles; and then, when he turns his eyes towards you, it will be with
the gaze of one who beholds his happiness. You do not weep now,
Valerie!"







PREFATORY NOTE. (BY THE AUTHOR'S SON.)

The Parisians and Kenelm Chillingly were begun about the same time, and
had their common origin in the same central idea. That idea first found
fantastic expression in The Coming Race; and the three books, taken
together, constitute a special group distinctly apart from all the other
works of their author.

The satire of his earlier novels is a protest against false social
respectabilities; the humour of his later ones is a protest against the
disrespect of social realities. By the first he sought to promote social
sincerity, and the free play of personal character; by the last, to
encourage mutual charity and sympathy amongst all classes on whose
interrelation depends the character of society itself. But in these
three books, his latest fictions, the moral purpose is more definite and