pounds, I
think; the brief but poignant plucking of Mr. Dawkins; the occasion in
_Sans Merci_ where the hero _will_ not lead trumps, and thereby, though
not at once, seals his fate; and a quite nice game at Marmora in Mr. E.
F. Benson's _The Babe, B.A._ emerge from many memories, reinforced by
some of actual experience. Marmora _is_ a nice game: with penny stakes,
and three players only, you may have five pounds in the pool before you
know where you are. But I do not know anything more really exciting than
a game at which you guess how many marbles the other fellow holds in his
fist. The sequel, however, in which you have to ask for an advance of
pocket-money to settle your "differences", is not so pleasant.

[545] Another scene, which brings on the _denouement_ and in which
Claire is again supposed to have the _beau role_, does not please me
much better. Thinking that her husband is flirting with the detested
Duchess, she publicly orders her out of the house--a very natural, but a
rather "fish-faggy" proceeding.

[546] It has been, and will be, pointed out that he was in all ways
studious to run before the wind; and it was just at this time, if I
remember rightly, that the catchword of "conflict" began to pester one
in criticism. Perhaps this was the reason.

[547] The argument, or assumption rather, is all the odder because, on
the one hand, orthodoxy holds Free-will (if it accepts that) as a Divine
endowment of the Soul: and, on the other, serious Atheism is almost
always Determinist. But the study of M. Ohnet was probably not much
among the Sentences.

[548] The obituarist above mentioned, who thought M. Ohnet a belated
Romantic, thought also that he was "struggling against the rising tide
of Realism." I do not think you would ever have found him struggling
against rising tides, and, as a matter of fact, the tide was already on
the turn.

[549] Already mentioned in the case of M. Cherbuliez (_v. sup._ p. 447).

[550]

[Sidenote: Note on _La Seconde Vie de M. T._]

The second part is occupied with two different but connected subjects.
Suzanne, the first wife, dies suddenly, and the two daughters, the
elder, Annie, quite, and the second, Laurence, nearly grown up--return
to the custody of their father, and therefore to the society at least of
his second wife, Blanche, who, though of course feeling the awkwardness,
welcomes them as well as she can. The situation, though much _more_
awkward, is something like