devil. First he conquered the temptation to marry
and be comfortable; next he put fame behind him, and now he renounces
power."

And she said: "It had never occurred to me to consider Laura Van Dorn,
or national reputation, or a genuine chance for great usefulness as a
devil. I'm not sure that I like your taste in devils."

To which answer may be made again by Mr. Left in a communication he
received from George Meredith, who had recently passed over. It was
verified by certain details as to the arrangement of the books on the
little table in the little room in the little house on a little hill
where he was wont to write, and it ran thus:

"Women, always star-hungry, ever uncompromising in their demand
for rainbows, nibbling at the entre' and pushing aside the
roast, though often adoring primitive men who gorge on it, but
ever in the end rewarding abstinence and thus selecting a race
of spiritually-minded men for mates, are after all the world's
materialists."

CHAPTER XLII

A CHAPTER WHICH IS CONCERNED LARGELY WITH THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF "THE FULL
STRENGTH OF THE COMPANY"

This story, first of all, and last of all, is a love story. The emotion
called love and its twin desire hunger, are the two primal passions of
life. From love have developed somewhat the great altruistic
institutions of humanity--the family, the tribe, the State, the nation,
and the varied social activities--religion, patriotism, philanthropy,
brotherhood. While from hunger have developed war and trade and property
and wealth. Often it happens in the growth of life that men have small
choice in matters of living that are motived by hunger or its descendant
concerns; for necessity narrows the choice. But in affairs of the heart,
there comes wide latitudes of choice. It is reasonably just therefore to
judge a man, a nation, a race, a civilization, an era, by its love
affairs. So a book that would tell of life, that would paint the manners
of men, and thus show their hearts, must be a love story. "As a man
thinketh in his heart, so is he," runs the proverb, and, mind you, it
says heart--not head, not mind, but heart; as a man thinketh in his
heart, in that part of his nature where reside his altruistic
emotions--so is he.

It is the sham and shame of the autobiographies that flood and
dishearten the world, that they are so uncandid in their relation of
those emotional episodes in life--episodes which have to do with