lofty abstractions which Men call principles and appeal
to as they would appeal to a just God, Himself. No one but Mr. Bennett
seems to realise that the relation between a man and his wife necessarily
transcends every abstraction, brushes aside every ideal of "right" and
"wrong." Mr. Bennett, in the course of the amazing discoveries of an
amazing lifetime, has made the greatest discovery possible to mortals of
this planet. He has discovered that marriage occurs when a man and a woman
take the law into their own hands, and not only the human law, but the
divine.

It would be impossible for the hero of a Bennett novel of recent years to
be a character like Mark Sabre in _If Winter Comes_. Arnold Bennett's
married hero would realise that the health, comfort, wishes, doubts,
dissimulations; the jealousies, the happiness or the fancied happiness,
and the exterior appearances of the woman who was his wife abolish, for
practical purposes, everything else. It is due to Mr. Bennett more than to
anyone else that we now understand that while "husband" may be a correct
legal designation, "lover" is the only possible aesthetic appellation of
the man who is married. If he is not a lover he is not a husband except
for statutory purposes--that is all.

[Illustration: ARNOLD BENNETT]

=ii=

It is hard to describe _Lilian_. I will let you taste it:

"Lilian, in dark blue office frock with an embroidered red line round the
neck and detachable black wristlets that preserved the ends of the sleeves
from dust and friction, sat idle at her flat desk in what was called 'the
small room' at Felix Grig's establishment in Clifford Street, off Bond
Street. There were three desks, three typewriting machines and three
green-shaded lamps. Only Lilian's lamp was lighted, and she sat alone,
with darkness above her chestnut hair and about her, and a circle of
radiance below. She was twenty-three. Through the drawn blind of the
window could just be discerned the backs of the letters of words painted
on the glass: 'Felix Grig. Typewriting Office. Open day and night.' Seen
from the street the legend stood out black and clear against the faintly
glowing blind. It was eleven p.m.

"That a beautiful girl, created for pleasure and affection and expensive
flattery, should be sitting by herself at eleven p.m., in a gloomy office
in Clifford Street, in the centre of the luxurious, pleasure-mad, love-mad
West End of London seemed shocking and contrary to nat