,--faces little
understood on earth because they belong to heaven.

There is indeed only one law of beauty on which we may rely,--that it
invariably breaks all the laws laid down for it by the professors of
aesthetics. All the beauty that has ever been in the world has broken
the laws of all previous beauty, and unwillingly dictated laws to the
beauty that succeeded it,--laws which that beauty has no less
spiritedly broken, to prove in turn dictator to its successor.

The immortal sculptors, painters, and poets have always done exactly
what their critics forbade them to do. The obedient in art are always
the forgotten.

Likewise beautiful women have always been a law unto themselves. Who
could have prophesied in what way any of these inspired law-breakers
would break the law, what new type of perfect imperfection they would
create?

So we return to the Perfect Woman, having gained this much knowledge of
her,--that her perfection is nothing more or less than her unique,
individual, charming imperfection, and that she is simply the woman we
love and who is fool enough to love us.

CHAPTER VI

IN WHICH THE AUTHOR ANTICIPATES DISCONTENT ON THE PART OF HIS READER

"But come," I imagine some reader complaining, "isn't it high time for
something to happen?" No doubt it is, but what am I to do? I am no
less discontented. Is it not even more to my interest than to the
reader's for something to happen? Here have I been tramping along
since breakfast-time, and now it is late in the afternoon, but never a
feather of her dove's wings, never a flutter of her angel's robes have
I seen. It is disheartening, for one naturally expects to find
anything we seek a few minutes after starting out to seek it, and I
confess that I expected to find my golden mistress within a very few
hours of leaving home. However, had that been the case, there would
have been no story, as the novelists say, and I trust, as he goes on,
the reader may feel with me that that would have been a pity. Besides,
with that prevision given to an author, I am strongly of opinion that
something will happen before long. And if the worst comes to the
worst, there is always that story of my First Love wherewith to fill
the time. Meanwhile I am approaching a decorative old Surrey town,
little more than a cluster of ripe old inns, to one of which I have
much pleasure in inviting the reader to dinner.

CHAPTER VII

PRANDIAL

Dinner!

Is there a