situation is
possible, certainly, but it isn't simple, or natural, or probable. We
are behaving precisely like characters in fiction, who, having been
popular in the first volume, are exploited again and again until their
popularity wanes. We are like the Trotty books or the Elsie Dinmore
series. England was our first volume, Scotland our second, and here we
are, if you please, about to live a third volume in Ireland. We fall in
love, we marry and are given in marriage, we promote and take part
in international alliances, but when the curtain goes up again, our
accumulations, acquisitions--whatever you choose to call
them--have disappeared. We are not to the superficial eye the
spinster-philanthropist, the bride to be, the wife of a year; we are
the same old Salemina, Francesca and Penelope. It is so dramatic that my
husband should be called to America; as a woman I miss him and need him;
as a character I am much better single. I don't suppose publishers like
married heroines any more than managers like married leading ladies.
Then how entirely proper it is that Ronald Macdonald cannot leave his
new parish in the Highlands. The one, my husband, belongs to the first
volume; Francesca's lover to the second; and good gracious, Salemina,
don't you see the inference?"

"I may be dull," she replied, "but I confess I do not."

"We are three?"

"Who is three?"

"That is not good English, but I repeat with different emphasis WE are
three. I fell in love in England, Francesca fell in love in Scotland-"
And here I paused, watching the blush mount rosily to Salemina's grey
hair; pink is very becoming to grey, and that, we always say, accounts
more satisfactorily for Salemina's frequent blushes than her modesty,
which is about of the usual sort.

"Your argument is interesting, and even ingenious," she replied, "but
I fail to see my responsibility. If you persist in thinking of me as
a character in fiction, I shall rebel. I am not the stuff of which
heroines are made; besides, I would never appear in anything so cheap
and obvious as a series, and the three-volume novel is as much out of
fashion as the Rollo books."

"But we are unconscious heroines, you understand," I explained. "While
we were experiencing our experiences we did not notice them, but they
have attained by degrees a sufficient bulk so that they are visible
to the naked eye. We can look back now and perceive the path we have
travelled."

"It isn't retrospect