My three ladies received him, however; he was very agreeable as
usual, but refused wine, beer, water, lemonade, chocolate, and at last a
cigarette. Then my wife asked him, "So you refuse to break bread?" and
he waved his hands amiably in answer. All my three ladies received the
same impression that he had serious matters in his mind: now we hear he
is quite cock-a-hoop since the mail came, and going about as before his
troubles darkened. But what did he want with me? 'Tis thought he had
received a despatch--and that he misreads it (so we fully believe) to
the effect that they are to have war ships at command and can make their
little war after all. If it be so, and they do it, it will be the
meanest wanton slaughter of poor men for the salaries of two white
failures. But what was his errand with me? Perhaps to warn me that
unless I behave he now hopes to be able to pack me off in the _Curacoa_
when she comes.

I have celebrated my holiday from _Samoa_ by a plunge at the beginning
of _The Young Chevalier_. I am afraid my touch is a little broad in a
love story; I can't mean one thing and write another. As for women, I am
no more in any fear of them; I can do a sort all right; age makes me
less afraid of a petticoat, but I am a little in fear of grossness.
However, this David Balfour's love affair, that's all right--might be
read out to a mother's meeting--or a daughters' meeting. The difficulty
in a love yarn, which dwells at all on love, is the dwelling on one
string; it is manifold, I grant, but the root fact is there unchanged,
and the sentiment being very intense, and already very much handled in
letters, positively calls for a little pawing and gracing. With a writer
of my prosaic literalness and pertinency of point of view, this all
shoves toward grossness--positively even toward the far more damnable
_closeness_. This has kept me off the sentiment hitherto, and now I am
to try: Lord! Of course Meredith can do it, and so could Shakespeare;
but with all my romance, I am a realist and a prosaist, and a most
fanatical lover of plain physical sensations plainly and expressly
rendered; hence my perils. To do love in the same spirit as I did (for
instance) D. Balfour's fatigue in the heather; my dear sir, there were
grossness--ready made! And hence, how to sugar? However, I have nearly
done with Marie-Madeleine, and am in good hopes of Marie-Salome, the
real heroine; the other is only a prologuial heroine to introduce the