er or not they have been born for
each other. If you are agreed, say, in admiring Meredith, Hardy, Omar
Khayyam, and Maeterlinck,--to take four particularly
test-authors,--there is nothing to prevent your marrying at once.
Indeed, a love for any one of these significant writers will be enough,
not to speak of an admiration for "Aucassin and Nicolete."

Now, Nicolete and I soon found that we had all these and many another
writer in common, and before our lunch was ended we were nearer to each
other than many old friends. The heart does not more love the heart
that loves it than the brain loves the brain that comprehends it; and,
whatever else was to befall us, Nicolete and I were already in love
with each other's brains. Whether or not the malady would spread till
it reached the heart is the secret of some future chapter.

CHAPTER VI

A FAIRY TALE AND ITS FAIRY TAILORS

As this is not a realistic novel, I do not hold myself bound, as I have
said before, to account reasonably for everything that is done--least
of all, said--within its pages. I simply say, So it happened, or So it
is, and expect the reader to take my word. If he be uncivil enough to
doubt it, we may as well stop playing this game of fancy. It is one of
the first conditions of enjoying a book, as it is of all successful
hypnotism, that the reader surrenders up his will to the writer, who,
of course, guarantees to return it to him at the close of the volume.
If you say that no young lady would have behaved as I have presently to
relate of Nicolete, that no parents were ever so accommodating in the
world of reality, I reply,--No doubt you are right, but none the less
what I have to tell is true and really did happen, for all that. And
not only did it happen, but to the whimsically minded, to the true
children of fancy, it will seem the most natural thing in the world.
No doubt they will wonder why I have made such a preamble about it, as
indeed, now I think of it, so do I.

Again I claim exemption in this wandering history from all such
descriptive drudgery upon second, third, and fourth dramatis
personsonae as your thorough-going novelist must undertake with a good
grace. Like a host and hostess at a reception, the poor novelist has
to pretend to be interested in everybody,--in the dull as in the
brilliant, in the bore as in the beauty. I'm afraid I should never do
as a novelist, for I should waste all my time with the heroine; whereas
the tr