ment for
the mustard or the pepper, to cut the bread for her with geometrical
precision, and to lean as near her warm shoulder as we dare to pour out
for her the sacred wine.

Yes! for sure I was twenty again, for the performance of these simple
services for Nicolete gave me a thrill of pure boyish pleasure such as
I had never expected to feel again. And did she not make a knight of
me by gently asking if I would be so kind as to carve the chicken, and
how she laughed quite disproportionally at my school-boy story of the
man who, being asked to carve a pigeon, said he thought they had better
send for a wood-carver, as it seemed to be a wood pigeon.

And while we ate and drank and laughed and chatted, the books around us
were weaving their spells. Even before the invention of printing books
were "love's purveyors." Was it not a book that sent Paolo and
Francesca for ever wandering on that stormy wind of passion and of
death? And nowadays the part played by books in human drama is greater
than we perhaps realise. Apart from their serious influence as
determining destinies of the character, what endless opportunities they
afford to lovers, who perhaps are denied all other meeting-places than
may be found on the tell-tale pages of a marked volume. The method is
so easy and so unsuspect. You have only to put faint pencil-marks
against the tenderest passages in your favourite new poet, and lend the
volume to Her, and She has only to leave here and there the dropped
violet of a timid confirmatory initial, for you to know your fate. And
what a touchstone books thus become! Indeed they simplify love-making,
from every point of view. With books so inexpensive and accessible to
all as they are to-day, no one need run any risks of marrying the wrong
woman. He has only to put her through an unconscious examination by
getting her to read and mark a few of his favourite authors, and he is
thus in possession of the master clues of her character. With a list
of her month's reading and a photograph, a man ought to be able to make
up his mind about any given woman, even though he has never spoken to
her. "Name your favourite writer" should be one of the first questions
in the Engagement Catechism.

There is, indeed, no such short cut to knowledge of each other as a
talk about books. One short afternoon is enough for any two
book-lovers, though they may have met for the first time in the
morning, to make up their minds wheth