s satisfied by a happy play upon words, but
few have reason enough to discriminate when the brilliant ingenuity
of the phrase-maker is pitted against a plain statement of the bald
truth."

"As, for instance?" asked Sir George.

"Man's love is of his life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence,"

Mrs. Kilroy responded glibly. "That is quoted everywhere, and I have
never heard it questioned, yet it is a flagrant case of confounding
smartness with accuracy. Love of the kind that Byron meant is quite as
much a thing apart from woman's life as from man's; more men, in fact,
make the pursuit of it their whole existence than women do."

"You are right," said Sir George thoughtfully. "Love is certainly not
a modern woman's whole existence, and she never dies of it. She feels
it strongly, but it does not swamp her. In a bad attack, she may go to
bed young one night and rise next day with grey hairs in her head, and
write a book about it; but then she recovers: and I think you are
right about phrases, too. 'Syllables govern the world,' John Selden
said; but 'phrases' would have been the better word. Phrases are the
keynotes to life; they set the tune to which men insensibly shape
their course, and so rule us for good and ill. This is a time of talk,
and formidable is the force of phrases. Catch-words are creative; they
do not prove that a thing is--they cause it to be."

"Then an unscrupulous phrase-maker may be a danger to the community,"
Beth observed.

"Yes," said Sir George; "but on the other hand, one who is scrupulous
would be a philanthropist of extraordinary power."

"Now, isn't that like his craft and subtlety, Evadne?" said Mrs.
Kilroy to Lady Galbraith. "He has been gradually working up to that in
order to make Mrs. Maclure suppose I intended to pay him a compliment
when I called him a phrase-maker."

"You are taking a mean advantage of an honest attempt on my part to
arrive at the truth," said Sir George.

"I believe you blundered into that without seeing in the least where
you were going," Beth observed naively.

Everybody smiled, except Dan, who told her on the way home she had
made a great mistake to say such a thing, and she must be careful in
future, or she would give offence and make enemies for him.

"No fear with people like that," said Beth. "They all understood me."

"Which is as much as to say that your husband does not," said Dan,
assuming his hurt expression. "Very well. Go you