to give enjoyment to him, in fact, a prostitute. He did not know
he felt this, could not know it, in fact. It would have needed a
revolution of his character to turn his vision to something other than
himself. Neither did the wife realize her egoism, an egoism more
agreeable certainly than was his, because on a less crude plane, but
equally reprehensible, as spiritually barren and limited to Self as was
that of the man.

Now, Miss Netta Syrett, the writer of the book, seems to be unaware of
such a failure on the woman's part. All the blame is shoveled on to the
hero, all the sympathy wrapped like a thick woolen cloud about the
heroine. Miss Syrett is a great feminist. As we should expect, the
marriage is broken in the Divorce Court. The returned and invalided
hero, decorated with his Victoria Cross, seeks happiness with an
earlier love, and a marriage is made of a frankly sensual character.
Meanwhile the heroine finds a spiritual mate in the person of an old
friend, and a second marriage is made. We are led to believe that all
the wrong is set right. Now, I doubt this. I believe the cause which
brought the first marriage to such painful disaster was not dependent
only on the evident unsuitability of the partners to live with one
another; the grossness of the man and the believed refinement of the
woman need not necessarily have failed in finding happiness in union.
No, the cause of failure was deeper, within themselves, dependent on the
blind egoism of both the husband and the wife and their wrong
understanding of the institution of marriage. I do not think that in
either case the second marriages were likely to be much happier than the
first marriage.

II

The love-story of to-day differs in one essential way from the
love-story of yesterday. Yesterday's love story always ended with
marriage bells; to-day's, which is a far harder love-story to write,
begins with them. Earlier authors, in short, shirked the real problem
of marriage, they ended where they should have begun. For the main
difficulties do not lie in the period of falling in love, in the
courtship or the honeymoon, but in the preservation of love after these
passionate preliminaries are over.

Now, I would like to be able to say that the modern love-story affords a
sure sign of a change that has taken place in our attitude towards
marriage. I am not, however, at all certain. We talk a great deal, I
fear, that is all. The innumerable tragedies of marr