een retold ever
since; the story of lovers vilely parted in the beginning and virtuously
united at the end. It is a highly original story, to which anybody can
give a fresh twist and Jones had planned to have the hero killed at the
front and the heroine marry the villain, but only to divorce the latter
before the hero--whose death had been falsely gazetted--limps in.

But Jones knew his trade. He knew that the reader always balks unless
the hero gets the heroine firsthand and he had thought of making the
villain an invalid. Yet at that too he knew the reader would balk. The
reader is so nice-minded!

Now, the plot recurring, he said to Verelst: "Your knowledge of women
has, I am sure, made you indulgent."

"Not in the least."

"But----"

"Look here," Verelst interrupted. "When I was young and consequently
very experienced, I was indulgent. But monsters change you. Last night I
dined with one."

"Enviable mortal!"

"You remember Abraham?" Verelst continued. "His name was Abraham--wasn't
it?--that benevolent old man in the Bible who made the sacrifice of
sacrificing an animal instead of his son? Well, last night it seemed to
me that there are women Abrahams, only less benevolent. The altar was
veiled, the knife was concealed, but the victim was there--a girl for
whom, at your age, I would have died, or offered to die, which amounts
to the same thing. What is more to the point, at your age, or no, for
you are much older than your conversation would lead one to believe, but
in my careless days I offered to die for her mother. I swore I could not
live without her. That is always a mistake. It is too flattering,
besides being untrue. Perhaps she so regarded it. In any event another
man fared better or worse. Afterward, time and again, he said to me:
'Peter, for God's sake, run away with her.' Am I boring you?"

"Enormously."

"Well, he was very gentlemanly about it. Without making a fuss at home,
he went away and died in a hospital. She was very grateful to him for
that. But her gratitude waned when she came in for his money. It was
adequate but not opulent, the result being that she tried to train her
daughter for the great matrimonial steeplechase. Just here the plot
thickens. Recently the filly shied, took the bit in her teeth
and--hurrah, boys!--she was off on her own, until her mother jockied her
up to a hurdle that she could not take and the filly came a cropper. But
her mother was still one too many for her