Jansenius. "I wonder at a man of
your ability behaving and speaking as you sometimes do."

"I hope a little insincerity, when meant to act as chloroform--to save
a woman from feeling a wound to her vanity--is excusable. By-the-bye,
I must send a couple of telegrams from the first post-office we pass.
Well, sir, I am going to marry Agatha, as I sent you word. There was
only one other single man and one other virgin down at Brandon Beeches,
and they are as good as engaged. And so--

"'Jack shall have Jill, Nought shall go ill, The man shall have his mare
again; And all shall be well.'"

APPENDIX

LETTER TO THE AUTHOR FROM MR. SIDNEY TREFUSIS.

My Dear Sir: I find that my friends are not quite satisfied with the
account you have given of them in your clever novel entitled "An
Unsocial Socialist." You already understand that I consider it my duty
to communicate my whole history, without reserve, to whoever may desire
to be guided or warned by my experience, and that I have no sympathy
whatever with the spirit in which one of the ladies concerned recently
told you that her affairs were no business of yours or of the people who
read your books. When you asked my permission some years ago to make
use of my story, I at once said that you would be perfectly justified
in giving it the fullest publicity whether I consented or not, provided
only that you were careful not to falsify it for the sake of artistic
effect. Now, whilst cheerfully admitting that you have done your best
to fulfil that condition, I cannot help feeling that, in presenting the
facts in the guise of fiction, you have, in spite of yourself, shown
them in a false light. Actions described in novels are judged by a
romantic system of morals as fictitious as the actions themselves. The
traditional parts of this system are, as Cervantes tried to show, for
the chief part, barbarous and obsolete; the modern additions are largely
due to the novel readers and writers of our own century--most of them
half-educated women, rebelliously slavish, superstitious, sentimental,
full of the intense egotism fostered by their struggle for personal
liberty, and, outside their families, with absolutely no social
sentiment except love. Meanwhile, man, having fought and won his fight
for this personal liberty, only to find himself a more abject slave
than before, is turning with loathing from his egotist's dream of
independence to the collective interests of society, with t